City of Mission, TX, firefighters saved at least eight people from the high water in the Rio Grande Valley after torrential storms last night.
Mission Assistant Fire Chief Robert Alvarez, who is also the Emergency Management Coordinator, told CBS 4 News Rio Grande Valley that they had to use their high-profile truck to pull people to safety.
“We had to deploy one of our high-profile vehicles with our personnel to go and evacuate some citizens who were requesting to be evacuated from the residence due to the rising water and then we also had to experience some vehicles that had driven into high water, and those people needed to be rescued from the vehicles,” said Alvarez.
“It’s always harder when it’s at night and last night it happened overnight, so the element of not being able to see everything and then the heavy rain and the wind just makes it very difficult for our rescuers,” said Alvarez.
Alvarez said the Mission Fire Department annual training ‘Flood Awareness Class’ helped the firefighters handle floodwaters.
“It’s going to allow our personnel to know what equipment they should use if they need to use some of the specialized equipment, such as a rope bag, and have experience in operating around floodwaters,” Alvarez told CBS 4.
