The Ottumwa Fire Department is $10,000 closer to getting a river rescue boat courtesy of the Washington County Riverboat Foundation. Last October, the Ottumwa Fire Department responded to a call of a person trapped in the Des Moines River. At the time there was a flood warning in effect. They brought two rescue boats with them, one large Jon boat and one smaller raft.

Chief Tony Miller reflects on that night, “I’ve been in the fire service for 37 years now, and we had a situation on October 8th I’ve never been involved with before. We almost lost two guys on the river. What happened that night is the boat capsized. Rich, our captain, he was floating down the river, we had no idea where he was at. Our other guy Will, one of our young guys, he was thrown in the river also. He got out relatively quick, he swam out. [Rich] was in the middle of the Des Moines River floating down, pitch dark, cold rain. Rich raises his arm. When he raised his arm up, they saw the stripe on his coat. That’s how we finally found where Rich was. We are very lucky we have these two guys.”

Both men survived that night, but their large rescue boat was lost. The WCRF awarded the department a $10,000 grant to go towards the purchase of a replacement.