Vancouver firefighters rescue man and dog from sailboat on Columbia River during ‘bomb cyclone’

PORTLAND – The team of Vancouver, Washington, firefighters arrived at the dock on the Columbia River Tuesday in the midst of a raging “bomb cyclone” storm.

Their mission: to rescue a man and his puppy stuck on a 32-foot sailboat. The boat was partially tied to the dock, but the long rope left the vessel too far away for the man and dog to jump to the dock. With winds raging, there was little hope of pulling the boat closer.

“I was concerned for the person we were about to rescue,” Vancouver Fire Department Battalion Chief Goeff Robbins told The Oregonian/OregonLive. “Those were the worst conditions on the river I’d ever seen.”

Firefighters first tried reaching the man using the dock before they realized that wasn’t going to work. The dock, tossed to and from by the storm, was too unstable. They’d need to bring in the rescue boat.

“Waves were crashing over the dock,” Captain Jesse Martin said. “I was a little nervous going out on that dock. I thought it could break apart at any moment.”

The crew of a fire department boat maneuvered to within a few feet of the sailboat, which Martin said was a difficult feat given the strong winds and the crashing waves.

But the fire boat held its position long enough for a rescue swimmer to jump the short distance between it and the sailboat. He then helped the man and his dog jump to the safety of the fire boat, Martin said.

Robbins added that the man on the sailboat, whose name hasn’t been released, was “frantic” with fear, so the swimmer had to coax him out of the cabin of the sailboat to get him to safety. Martin said the dog, a terrier mix that weighed roughly 40 pounds, was trying to shake out of the fire department swimmer’s arms during the rescue.

They put a lot of work into that boat, they train a lot on it,” Martin said. “I’m just really proud of what those guys did.”