Sunrise Beach firefighters trained on water rescues

An unexpected call came in as Sunrise Beach firefighters were dispatched to a person drowning in the main channel of the Lake of the Ozarks.

They went to rescue the victim, but luckily is was just a training exercise.

Most people would think if they were drowning Water Patrol would be the one’s to save them, but that’s not always the case at the Lake of the Ozarks.

All the Sunrise Beach firefighters knew today was that they were going to be busy from ten to twelve this morning.

From the time they got the call that someone was drowning in the main channel to the point they got the victim in the boat, it was eleven minutes.

The fire chief staged a drowning in the middle of the lake without their knowing.

Once firefighters communicated with dispatch to find out where the drowning victim was they rescued him by jumping in the water after a few failed attempts to get him to grab onto a rope.

The “victim” in this drowning scenario was fire chief Dennis Reilly. The man who saved the chief was 21-year-old Matthew Jones.

“It was get in as quickly as possible and get him out of the water as quickly as possible and at the same time watching my hazards,” said Jones.

This was his first water rescue training in his fourteen months of working at the fire department.

Chief Reilly said eleven minutes from land to getting the victim in the boat isn’t too bad for the first time.

“If we do it the next time we can probably compress the time that it took to get the victim, which was me, back onto the boat,” said Reilly.

Reilly said he is happy with the amount of time it took his crew to get him out of the water, however he wants the number of minutes to go from eleven to 8 from the time they are dispatched to the point they get the victim in the boat.

According to the Centers for Disease Control about ten people die everyday from drowning. It’s the fifth leading cause of death in the United States.