A truck and the boat trailer attached to it were pulled out of the water at a Morgan County, Alabama boat ramp on Sunday after the truck rolled backward into the lake, according to ABC 33/40. A dive team and a wrecker service worked together to bring both back up.
The Morgan County Rescue Squad said it was called to the Hickory Hills Boat Ramp at around 1 p.m. on June 7. Someone had reported that a truck and its attached boat trailer had gone into the water and become submerged. Crews arrived and briefly met with the vehicle’s owner to size up the situation. No injuries were reported at that time.
Members of the Rescue Squad’s dive team went into the water to reach the submerged truck and trailer. They attached recovery equipment to both before working with a wrecker service to haul them out. The Rescue Squad said the operation was finished without any problems, and it was seemingly quite the smooth extraction process.
With the truck and trailer back on solid ground, the emergency rescue call ended as a property matter. For the owner, the worst of it was likely a water-damaged truck, not anything more serious. Still, no one wants to deal with waterlogged vehicle, even if there’s no damage done. Water can take a long time to get out of fabric or interiors, for one thing. In this situation, it was likely more inconvenient than anything else.
How Crews Pulled It Out of the Water
Recovering a vehicle from the bottom of a boat ramp is more involved than a typical tow. Because the truck and trailer were underwater, divers had to go in first to find them and attach recovery equipment by hand. Only once everything was rigged could the rest of the work begin.
From there, the dive team worked with a wrecker service to pull the truck and trailer up the ramp and out of the water. The combination of divers below the surface and a wrecker up top is what made the recovery work. Luckily, there weren’t any odd issues that arose from the slip-up.
Why Trucks End Up in the Water at Boat Ramps
Scenes like this one play out at boat ramps a lot more often than you might think. The ramps are steep and slick, and a truck that’s left out of gear, or whose parking brake doesn’t hold can roll backward into the water while any driver is busy with the boat. It can happen in seconds. Then, once the truck is deep enough, it can be too late in worse situations.
The Rescue Squad did not say exactly what sent this truck rolling, and that detail may never come out. Either way, it did not change how the day ended. Fortunately, the truck and trailer are back on dry land, and no one was hurt getting them there.