'If it flips or sinks, show's over': Crews train to rescue vehicle passengers in floods

One wrong move could mean the difference between a rescue or a recovery mission when first responders are faced with the violent and volatile force of rushing water.

"If it flips or sinks, show's over. They're trapped, they're going to drown," says Jim Douglas, trainer of the vehicle-in-water rescue training program at Raven Rescue.

Last Saturday, the private company provided training to first responders at a simulated accident scene south of Pemberton B.C.  

Trainers chain a rusty vehicle to the ground next to the Rutherford Creek power plant. After a walk through of the training grounds, the floodgates open and water begins to fill the river.

      Water rescue simulation

Over the next several minutes, water pours into the vehicle, simulating a real flood.

"It doesn't take much water to make this move, eh?" shouts out one of the first responders standing beside the vehicle.

"Fair amount of force to it, yup," responds another trainee. 

In May, record volumes of water rushed into the rivers and lakes of B.C.'s interior, and flood events resulted in the death of two people.

During the same month, in Central and Eastern Canada, floods wreaked havoc and a two-year-old girl and a 37-year-old man died after their car was swept into the Sainte-Anne River in Quebec. The road had been closed to traffic due to the overflowing river. 

At the B.C. training site, trainees undergo a series of scenarios and are instructed how to extract a trapped passenger. During the exercise, 15 first responders — including one female trainee — work their way from simple rescue scenarios to more complex ones, taking turns being the trapped passenger and the rescuer. 

"People trapped inside vehicles usually need rapid extraction," Douglas said. "If they stay inside the vehicle and if that vehicle flips, they've absolutely no chance of survival, so our response needs to be brisk, coordinated and practiced to make it an effective rescue." 

      Need for hands-on practice

Rescuing passengers from a vehicle trapped in water carries its own unique difficulties, said Douglas.

"Anything we do, take something away from that [like remove a passenger] or change something, break a window, or if the front shield implodes, it changes the dynamic of the vehicle," he said.

Without hands-on practice, Douglas said the results could be tragic.

"Sixty per cent of fatalities in flood water is due to people trapped in vehicles," he said. "Most flood deaths occur with people in vehicles. This is why departments need to have this training." 

Listen to why first responders say they needs this training:

Douglas said not all emergency responders working in flood prone areas have practical training. 

"There is only so much time, only so much manpower and money out there to get all the training we need to do." 

Some first responders, like Trevor Thorsteinson, have come on their own dime after feeling ill-equipped to respond to such scenarios. 

"Being in the flood scene in Canmore in 2013, there was a lot of potential for this. Scary possibility that this could've been a very real thing," said Thorsteinson, a firefighter with Canmore Fire and Rescue. 

Take a 360 tour of rescuers at the facility:

On average, 40 people in Canada die every year in submersed vehicles, according to the Canadian Drowning Prevention Research Centre.

In North America, that number is approximately 400 people annually, according to Operation ALIVE - Automobile submersion: Lessons in Vehicle Escape, a survival manual prepared by University of Manitoba researchers.

Gordon Giesbrecht, a physiologist and founder of Operation ALIVE, said all first responders in flood prone areas should receive this training. 

"This is not the kind of thing people should be making up as they go," said Giesbrecht. 

What to do if you're trapped in a car? Take a look:

​Giesbrecht's work is aimed at educating the public on what to do if a vehicle goes off a bridge or ends up in water.

"If you're in the water, most of the time you pack your own chute, you have to get out of that vehicle and no one else is going to rescue you," he said.

It normally takes you two seconds to unbuckle your seatbelt . . .  pretty good chance it will work.- Gordon Giesbrecht

His research has spurred emergency operators in Canada to change the protocol on how to respond to people trapped in a sinking car.

The advice to those trapped? Get out quickly, he said. Unbuckle the seatbelt, roll down the window and get out of the vehicle. 

"Seatbelts, windows — out, children first," are the steps you need to take within the first 63 seconds of hitting the water, he said. 

Giesbrecht said the likelihood of survival diminishes after the first minute, and people can drown. 

"It normally takes you two seconds to unbuckle your seatbelt, that's a couple of seconds and start working your electric windows — pretty good chance it will work," he said. 

Previously, the 9-1-1 advice to trapped passengers was to "hang tight. Tell us about your vehicle, where are you, describe more things, wait for the sirens," he said. 

"Then they realized, after a minute ... they're basically talking to people that are going to drown," he said.

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