Today, the Reno Fire Department's Water Entry Team (WET) went into the Truckee River to practice basic river rescue scenarios - even though they say it's early in the season.
They say it's great to get back into their WET training after having months of winter preventing them from doing so.
With the warmer weather we're seeing, it's good to start training now as more are people getting into the water.
They say in Reno alone they respond to 40 to 50 river rescues per year.
Jonathan Bernard, a firefighter with RFD and WET explains: "We like to be efficient at what we do, so we train every month. Three days a month we come out and train, and we’ll get the whole team through here over the next three days."
Today they trained on live scenarios. They have a simulated victim in the water, and they practice getting boats and swimmers in the water to perform rescues like they would in real life.
The firefighters say sometimes they see people getting in the water when they shouldn't be—like when it starts warming up in early spring—but the temperature of the water is so cold it can be deadly if you're not careful.
Bernard says, "The river temperature stays cold for a long time, so it’s not really ideal to be in the river in the springtime. Not to mention now that things start to warm up, the river flows are picking up as we get more snow melt. So it gets more and more dangerous for this early springtime."
The firefighters say that even with their gear on, they felt cold in the water.
Bernard goes on to say, "I was cold by the end of it, and I’m in a dry suit with multiple layers underneath it. If you were to get in with swim trunks and a T-shirt—something like that—you’d get hypothermia pretty quick."
They say with the water as cold as it is, it's too easy for someone to get hypothermia; and as your body goes through this, your muscles start working inefficiently.
Even if you're a good swimmer, you can find yourself in trouble.
Bernard reminds us, "At this point in the year, if you’re not a river person [with] kayaks and rafts, and dry suits and the right thermal protection - it’s better to stay out right now. Later on in the summer, once the flows come back down and it’s actually warm out—like July to August—those are better times for those folks.”
They recommend you stay out of the water right now unless you have the proper equipment and experience.
They also tell us if you get in the water and it's as cold as it is now, you can go into shock and that will make you hypothermic very quickly.
Bernard says, "You can be a really athletic person and find yourself in trouble pretty quick."
