Buffalo Grove Fire Dept. Water Rescue: Ready When Called Upon

The Buffalo Grove Fire Department Water Rescue Division is made up of three separate teams, including Dive, Sonar and Swift Water Rescue. Each of these teams serve different and important functions in the case when a person, vehicle or evidence of a crime is believed to have entered a body of water. Members of all three teams must complete up-to-date training and meet specific requirements depending on their specialties, which are described in more detail below.

Dive Team: The responsibility of the Dive Team is for rescue and/or recovery in subsurface water.

Sonar Team: Sonar Team Technicians workwith state-of-the-art sonar equipment to locate reported missing victims, vehicles, or other items that may be evidence of a crime that are believed to be under the surface of the water. Technicians work directly with the divers as
they can direct them in real time to targets located by the sonar equipment.

Swiftwater Rescue Team: The Swiftwater Rescue Team responsibility is to complete rescues in fast moving flood waters. They are deployed in situations where a person is stranded in a vehicle located in moving water, or if they are swept into a fast-moving body of water.

Ongoing water rescue trainings are held in Buffalo Grove at the Combined Area Training Facility (CAFT) facility, with the most training recent in August of 2019. Members of the Buffalo Grove Teams, along with teams from ten area fire departments trained together to recover a vehicle submerged in 15 feet of water. Objectives of the training were to work with simulated witnesses and locate the missing vehicle. Once located, the vehicle was searched for possible ‘victims’. The final objective was to locate points on the vehicle to determine the most efficient and safest way manner to remove it from the water by a simulated recovery company.

All teams have members that are cross trained and can work in more than one discipline of water rescue. The Buffalo Grove Fire Department is a member of the Mutual Aid Box Alarm System (MABAS). This is a program that is in place if there is a large-scale event where assistance is requested or given to area fire departments. The Buffalo Grove Water Rescue Division has been involved in more than a dozen events in 2019 already, which have included drowning incidents, vehicles submerged in the water, and two high profile incidents for missing persons in McHenry
County.