Peninsula's Swift Water Rescue Team Returns Home, But Keeping 'Gear Bags Packed'

MENLO PARK, CA – A Menlo Park-based swift water rescue team returned home on Friday following a deployment first to Sacramento and then to Los Gatos in case the recent rainstorms threatened people's lives, Menlo Park Fire Protection District officials said.

The team, which is made up of staff members of the fire protection district, was deployed Sunday after returning from Oroville the week before where a damaged auxiliary spillway threatened nearly 200,000 people.

"Standby missions are always a mixed bag of wanting to go operational while not wishing what that actually means on anyone," Fire Chief Schapelhouman said in a news release. "We have a number of new members on the Team that had never been deployed before mixed in with some very experienced senior personnel who had actually worked in places like New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina and they kept everyone grounded in that reality."

The rescue team from Menlo Park is one of the state's original swift water rescue teams established in 1994.

The team was ready to respond to San Jose if the city needed help, but that wasn't the case.

Menlo Park fire Chief Harold Schapelhouman said the team will be ready should melting snow cause flooding and threaten people's lives later this year.

"With reservoirs full and the fragile levee system already stressed in the Central Valley, the record snow pack may very well create a tipping point later this year, so all of the Team members are keeping their gear bags packed," he said.

– Images courtesy: Menlo Park Fire Protection District / Bay City News Service contributed to this report