NC Rescuers Use Remotely Underwater Vehicle for Lake Recoveries

When someone goes missing or drowns in Lake Norman, how do rescuers find them?

In June, a possible drowning was reported on Lake Norman. Within two minutes of the call, the Iredell County Sheriff’s Office Lake Patrol was on the scene searching for the missing person.

Deputies were able to find a woman and save her. A 63-year-old man, identified as Charles William Crowe Jr., drowned. The sheriff’s office and other rescue agencies were able to find Crowe’s body within 24 hours, Sheriff Darren Campbell said.

The sheriff’s office used a remotely operated underwater vehicle called an ROV to find and pull Crowe’s body from the water. Deputies were able to respond to the scene using a closed-cabin fast response boat. Campbell said the boat was bought with money recovered from drug operations. The boat is equipped with cameras, heat detection technology and sonar.

The remote underwater vehicles were also used to recover the body of 14-year-old Angel Ernesto Carabello who drowned in Lake Norman in July.

Campbell said the vehicles were bought with money from the N.C. General Assembly. The General Assembly money paid for a second boat for Lake Norman patrols as well. Campbell said the sheriff’s office moved its old boat to Lake Lookout to have coverage there.

The remote vehicles started being used about a year ago. Campbell said the vehicles have been used to recover drowning victims, to search for missing people and to retrieve evidence such as discarded guns from the bottom of the lake. Campbell said his office was called to use the remote vehicles to help with Hurricane Helene recovery in western North Carolina.

“The need for (the remote vehicles) was because to recover a body for the family, we had to put divers in the water, work with our rescue teams, our fire departments,” Campbell said. “And Bradley Long, when he passed away trying to recover a body for a family, we said, ‘If there’s any technology or equipment that we can use that would keep that from happening in the future, we would do everything we could to get it.”

Sherrills Ford-Terrell Fire and Rescue Capt. Bradley Long drowned while trying to recover the body of 29-year-old Isia Cruz in Lake Norman, according to a 2016 Statesville Record & Landmark article.

Mooresville Fire-Rescue is another local emergency department with water rescue equipment. When a person drowns or is reported missing, the sheriff’s office is the lead agency in the search.

Mooresville Fire-Rescue has used sonar technology since 2010 and continuously updates its equipment as new technology becomes available, Mooresville Fire-Rescue Deputy Chief Shane Lacount said.

Mooresville Fire-Rescue’s current sonar setup costs about $40,000.

“(Mooresville Fire-Rescue) has sonar mapping capabilities with an onboard sonar on the marine unit (boat) and a pull behind Tow Fish device that is submerged and scans the bottom of the surface while being towed behind the marine unit,” Lacount said.

Mooresville Fire-Rescue Capt. Justin Christie and Lt. Joel Privette demonstrated the technology while riding on Lake Norman in the Mooresville Fire-Rescue boat. The firefighters had a dummy suspended from a buoy between 20 and 30 feet below the surface of the water. Privette pointed to an abnormality on the screen as the sonar device was pulled past the dummy.

“It takes a while to find bodies sometimes, because you may not get a good, accurate report where they were, or they might think they were right here, but they actually drifted, and then they’re a couple 100 feet off,” Christie said. “Narrowing that down can be a little tricky.”

Iredell County Sheriff’s Office Lake Patrol Sgt. Jarid Church said it is vital that responders are told exactly where a person went under the water because that is the area rescuers need to search first.

The sonar allows rescuers to determine the size of a detected item.

“Whenever we see that image, we’re trying to match it to (the size of what is being searched for),” Privette said. “Say that’s only four foot and we’re looking for a six-foot person. That would just be debris in the lake.”

When the sonar picks up a shape that could be what rescuers are looking for, the rescuers can place a digital flag on the exact location. The data is shared with other responders so they can check the area.

When a flagged target appears to be what responders are looking for, whether it’s a body or something else, the sheriff’s office sends down its remote vehicle. The vehicle has sonar and a camera. Deputies can search the water and retrieve the item, Church said.

Privette said having access to sonar equipment and the sheriff’s office’s underwater vehicle has made recovery efforts quicker than when he first became a firefighter. Before, rescuers would have to dredge along the bottom of the lake or wait until a body floated to the surface, which can take weeks.

Mooresville Fire-Rescue gets sent to six to 10 calls per year on Lake Norman. Those calls include boating accidents, medical incidents, hazmat releases, missing individuals and drownings, Lacount said.

Sheriff Campbell said the lake patrol responds to hundreds of calls each year. Lake Patrol deputies are on-call 24/7 and patrol more than 270 miles of shoreline.