Minneapolis Urban Explorer Rescued From Rushing Floodwaters
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- Two Minneapolis officers and Paramedic are being credited for saving a man from rushing flood waters. They worked together and although they had no formal water rescue training, they made it happen.
Officer Molly Trupe's body camera captures the adrenaline of the moment as she and fellow officer Craig Brown and a paramedic, Chad Durand, respond to the call.
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"We could look down and you could just see him holding on for dear life," Brown said. "He was just screaming and calling for help as much as possible."
Trupe says the team saw the urgency of the situation and knew they had to act fast.
"We saw him hanging on, he was screaming for help, we knew we couldn't wait for any more people, we knew we had to do something right away," she said. "[We] saw that there was a rope attached to him saw ... so we had to figure out."
Before the water was rushing, the man had been exploring the inside of storm drains along the Mississippi. He tethered himself to a tree but when the rain poured down, the force was too much and the officers and a paramedic had to figure it out.
Durand says it was trechorous.
"My concern was what if one of us loses our footing balance and gets pulled into the water," he said.
Trupe recounted the tense moments in a press conference Thursday evening.
"I was on the ledge and I started to walk and it was slippery, so I had to get down on my hands and knees and crawl through the weeds and stuff," she said. "My partner was hanging on the back of my belt so I wouldn't fall."
Durand says it wasn't a moment they trained for, but one they were ready for.
"It's kind of an instinctual thing -- his life is on the line, he's gotta rope tied to him, I'm just gonna pull the rope as hard as possible," he said.
And together, they did it. The man lost his clothes along the way but regained his footing. Durand says of the man was not hurt. "He was noticeably shaken up, he was very thankful, that he had met us as individuals."
