The Warwick Advertiser got it wrong

To the editor: I was the Incident Commander at the multi-agency water rescue drill conducted at Wickham Lake on Saturday, Oct. 20. The Fire Department appreciates your coverage of our activities, but I feel obligated to correct one important statement in your article. The incident was staged with the assistance of the New City Fire Department from Rockland County, two of their members were used as victims clinging to an overturned boat, while a third “victim,” a doll which represented an infant, was sunk underneath the area where the boat was overturned. Our members, including the Company line officers, were not informed of the location or type of drill we were conducting because we wanted to evaluate their readiness in case of such an emergency. The Warwick Fire Department, the Warwick Ambulance Corps, the Warwick Police Department, as well as the Greenwood Lake Fire Department, who responded with their boat, and the Monroe Fire Department, who responded with their dive team, performed quickly and flawlessly in sizing up the emergency, rescuing the victims from the Lake, and getting them to Ambulance personnel to render medical assistance. In fact, while we surmised that the emergency responders, once they were informed by “witnesses” that an infant was missing, might have to wait for the dive team to respond from Monroe, the infant was in fact found almost immediately by water rescue trained members of the Warwick Fire Department and turned over to ambulance personnel. Your article, unfortunately, states that we “weren’t able to save” the infant, which was actually recovered extremely quickly by alert personnel without the use of the dive team. Because the article, as written, reflects poorly not only on the efforts of our dedicated members on that particular day, but on the Department as a whole, we would greatly appreciate a correction in your next edition. Gregg Snigur First Assistant Chief Warwick Fire Department