Help is on the way

 

12/22/2014 10:24:00 AM
NewsTribune photo/Scott Anderson

Rachel Stella
Staff Writer

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It took 13 days for searchers to find the body of 62-year-old Nancy Greening of Peru, who died during the flooding of the Illinois River in the spring of 2013.

Greening’s body was found “in woody debris” by state conservation officers patrolling the river, according to a previous NewsTribune report.

This is the sort of tragedy that the staff members of the Peru Rescue Station hope to avoid with their new rescue vehicle.­

Larry Haupt, station commander, describes it as “an amphibious all-terrain vehicle … for going places you can’t get to with a boat.”

It looks like a cross between a jeep and a small tank, and it can ride on top of snow, break through ice and float in deep water. 

It also can enter shallow water, muddy backwoods areas and farm ponds, Haupt said.

“We get calls once in a while — somebody fell through the ice in a farm pond,” he said.

David Haupt, a rescue staff member and Larry’s brother, said the vehicle is particularly suited for extended searches in the wintertime because it’s heated. It can carry six people on land and four in the water, he said.

Although rescue calls don’t come in often, this vehicle is meant to be the one of choice for those in hard-to-reach locations.

“It would have made the rescues quicker, our personnel safer,” David Haupt said.

With help from friends
“We’ve been looking at it for two years,” Larry Hauptsaid.

The vehicle’s list price was $31,000, but thanks to some help from the dealer, E&M Powersports of Princeton, and donations from Fairmount Minerals of Ottawa, the Miller Group Charitable Trust and others, the station was able to acquire it much more easily.

Now the station has had the vehicle for a few weeks, and it may only be a matter of time before it is put to use.

“It just covers so many different aspects of the search and rescue that we thought it would be an asset down here,”Larry Haupt said. “Its capabilities are beyond just deep water — it can do anything.”

Rachel Stella can be reached at (815) 220-6933 or lasallereporter@newstrib.com. Follow her on Twitter @NT_LaSalle.

 

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