Simple Device Saves 2 Lives After Truck Falls Into River

STUART NEWS – 12/02/1997 SEWALL’S POINT – Though it took a tractor-trailer towing rig to fish their truck out of the water, the two men whose truck crashed over the edge of the Ernest Lyons Bridge and into the Indian River on Sunday were reeled to Safety by little more than a plastic disc and some nylon rope. It’s called the ResQ Disc™. This simple, Frisbee-like device proved true to its name Sunday afternoon. The two unidentified men’s pickup skidded through the bridge railing after the driver braked to avoid the closing drawbridge gates. They were in the water when Sewall’s Point Police Officers Rick Crouse and Scott Donlon arrived. Martin county sheriff’s deputies were already on the scene of the accident, which occurred on the northern edge of the bridge just east of the drawbridge operator’s booth. Unfortunately, however, there was little the deputies could do for the two men, who were scrambling to find something to hang on to. “Their truck was submerged,” Crouse said, “and the nearby bridge pilings were slick with algae and covered with barnacles.” So Crouse and Donlon ran to their cars and fetched their ResQ Discs. Each officer threw one down, and the two men grabbed hold. The men used the discs to stay afloat while a boater eventually arrived and was able to pick the men up and take them to shore. Neither man was injured, which Sewall’s Point police credit largely to the ResQ Discs, which the department’s four cruisers are equipped with. Like a thick Frisbee with a long nylon cord spooled around it, the disc is hardly the most complex tool used by police and rescue crews. “It’s fairly simple. You just tie it around your wrist and throw it out,” Crouse said. “When we first got them, we were all kind of joking. You know, ‘Now we’ve got something to play Frisbee with,’ but after this, we know it is a device to save lives. And it works.” Police Chief Wilbur Kirchner said the department recently purchased the discs for $49.90 each. “That’s well worth a human life, I’ll tell you that,” Kirchner said. The ResQ Discs had arrived in the mail two weeks prior.