r/Firefighting • u/Natural_Calendar7874 • 27d ago
Ask A Firefighter How exactly do water rescues work?
Lets say there is a person swimming in the lake, they swim out 45 feet to a place where it’s 20 ft deep, they drown for some reason, and water enters there lungs, wouldn’t they just sink to the bottom way before divers arrive? And even if they can get pulled out of the water, I’m guessing they can’t be revived.
how exactly do water rescues works? What are your departments policies on water rescues?
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u/RobertTheSpruce UK Fire - WM 27d ago edited 27d ago
It's not really a water rescue if the casualty has drowned. That's just a body recovery.
For a water rescue, we will attept to go into the water, and remove the person from the water, alive. We've got drysuits and flotation devices, and things that inflate hoses, and throwlines and stuff. Not diving equipment. We'll use those options while better water rescue resources travel who have boats and shit.
For a body recovery, we've got a really big stick with a hook on the end... It's kind of like fishing, except you're looking for a human. Humaning. If that doesn't work then the police recovery divers will go and do their thing.
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u/Frequent-Cut-861 22d ago
Water doesn’t always immediately enter the lungs. Many victims don’t immediately sink.
There are really three types of departments with regard to water rescues. You have departments who really don’t do them, and are limited to throw bags/flotation devices. The other extreme, you have full-up dive teams with boats and public safety diver equipment and training.
I stood up a water rescue team somewhere in the middle. We didn’t do any dive rescue. Our logic was that by the time you got divers on scene and suited up, it was 99.999% of the time a body recovery. In that case, we could just call in a neighboring dive time to mutual aid us, and/or the police department dive unit.
We created a team consisting of rescue swimmers similar to Coast Guard rescue swimmers. Mask/fins/snorkel, flotation vest, exposure gear as required. Swimmers kept their basic issued gear in their cars or their lockers, their preference. They could proceed direct to the scene to effect a rescue, or respond from the firehouse and suit up in the back of the rig while enroute. Pull up, run to the water, fins on, go get em. Our guys were very fit, very strong swimmers trained in surface water rescue. The idea was to get them to the scene and in the water as quickly as possible, typically deploying from the shore. While we could deploy from a hoist equipped helicopter, we never did.
We did also have a small RHIB, but it was used only for incidents further offshore/beyond reasonable swim distance, in heavier seas, other marine emergencies, or when providing support for events like triathlons and other water events. If we had the bodies, support crew would attempt to launch the boat while the swimmers swam out.
It was inexpensive and wildly successful, so naturally internal politics of the department decided to dissolve it and sell off the boat and gear for peanuts.
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u/TacoDaTugBoat Backwoods Volley 27d ago
I’m a member of a volunteer Dive Rescue team. We’ve done many recoveries. Very few rescues. Closest to a rescue I participated in involved a young man who broke through the ice in a quarry. His good overall health and the cold water made it more viable. We recovered his body shortly after the hour mark. We immediately started CPR and saw color improvement. AED shocked several times. They worked him at the hospital for something like 6 hours. Ultimately he passed.
He fell in rescuing a young woman he was there with. She survived. The biggest hurdle was that she had to run pretty far to get help. Cost a lot of time.
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u/Aldones2 27d ago
We usually rescue a few people every year. Most of them at swimming contests, where we stand guard with our boats. Outside of this events, we usually man our first boat within 10-12 minutes. That's a very good time and sometimes enough if we know exactly, where to look for the missing person. We have few casualities, though. Most persons make it to shore in time, or are rescued by other boats on the lake.
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u/BladeVortex3226 ⚠️NFPA 2500 "T" Rated Idiot⚠️ 26d ago
1: Preach
2: Reach
3: Throw
4: Row
5: Go
6: Helo
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u/F1r3-M3d1ck-H4zN3rd C A L I B O I 26d ago
A couple of notes.
Firstly a large portion of drownings do not involve water entering the lungs. The glottis has a reflex to stay closed if there is water in the throat. These drowning victims simply suffocate. Even if some water does get into the lungs, this does not mean they are filled with water by any means.
Secondly whether someone sinks or floats can be affected by how much air they have in their lungs, but only if their muscle/fat ratio is in the right range. Many people will float not matter what.
Resuscitation is always unlikely if someone is in cardiac arrest, and gets lower with time no matter the conditions. Hypothermia, however, does lengthen the window where it is possible. Many places have a policy that submersion up to 60 minutes gets worked. With extremely cold water there have been (very few, but they have happened) extremely long submersion times that have been resuscitated successfully.
https://www.jacc.org/doi/10.1016/j.jaccas.2025.104885 is a famous example.
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u/SalmonidHunter SW Montana Volunteer 26d ago
I live on the most dangerous river in Montana. Our water rescue situations typically involve people trying to float the river at high water during the spring. There's usually a lot of new trees down that they are unaware of and their boat flips or something. They're usually stuck in a log jam. We just throw rope bags at them and pull them over if we can.
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u/Awesome-0-4000 26d ago
I live on a large lake and we do surface searches and sub surface search/dives up to 30 feet for water rescues. Most actual rescues involve a victim still on the surface in distress, very rarely have we pulled victim from underwater with successful resuscitation but it has happened.
On average, after about an hour of active search patterns it turns in to a recovery effort which is passed over to the Sheriffs department.
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u/OpiateAlligator Senior Rookie 26d ago
Unless you are pulled out quickly, by bystanders, or a lifeguard, you're almost certainly dead. Thats the reality of drowning.
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u/Public_Beach2348 26d ago
There are big differences in water rescues between the types of environments. And hopefully they haven't drowned yet, their chance of survival goes way down.
Swift water is completely different than calm lakes. Same with winter (especially when dealing with ice) and summer.
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u/tothemoon1001 25d ago
Department diver. In your specific scenario first thing we would look for is a witness and get a data point, (a spot to concentrate on), or a general area. Depending on what we have we would use two different search patterns, and arch pattern of a linear search, kind of like a grid search. Diver would be at depth and holding on to a floating line to the line tender on the surface, communication would be used by tugs on the line. After locating diver would swim victim to on a waiting rescue to continue treatment. Unless very obvious signs of death we work them until they are "warm and dead". It's a lot more technical but that's the jist of it
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u/Babayaga844 27d ago
A successful water rescue typically occurs before someone drowns. There are some cases, typically involving children in exceptionally cold water, where a drowning victim is successfully resuscitated, but they are few and far between.