Rising water on the Santa Ana River near San Bernardino's E Street trapped people over the weekend, prompting a dramatic rescue operation by firefighters who used an inflatable raft to reach them as the river rushed by. No injuries were reported, though two conflicting accounts have emerged about exactly who was pulled from the water.
According to KTLA, the San Bernardino County Fire Protection District responded Sunday to find two women and four dogs stranded on an island after rising river water cut off their homeless camp from the riverbank. Firefighters launched an inflatable raft to reach the island, gave the women life jackets, and ferried them to shore, KTLA reported. The station said the small dogs required special rescue equipment and were secured in a mesh bag for the trip across the water.
A separate account from the Los Angeles Times describes a different version of events. In its live weather coverage, the paper reported that the San Bernardino County Fire Department rescued an adult man and an adult woman who were trapped inside a tunnel feeding the main flood channel. “Firefighters found him and an adult woman inside a tunnel that feeds the main flood channel,” the Los Angeles Times reported. It is not clear from available reporting whether the two accounts describe the same rescue or separate incidents that occurred along the same waterway.
How the Rescue Unfolded
Per the Los Angeles Times, the fire department received a call at 8:40 a.m. Sunday from an adult man who said he was trapped in rising floodwaters. The paper reported that the two rescued individuals said they lived in a camp outside the channel, and that neither reported injuries; both declined evaluations by paramedics, according to the same report.
In the days before the rescue, the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department had flown along flood channels warning people that a storm was approaching and urging them to move to higher ground, the Los Angeles Times reported. Whatever the precise sequence of events on the ground, both outlets agree that firefighters got everyone out of the rushing water without injury.
A Familiar Scene Along the Santa Ana River
Flooding rescues near this stretch of the river are not new. In February 2019, firefighters rescued five people from floodwaters flowing through the Santa Ana River in San Bernardino and Redlands, according to the Southern California News Group. Crews pulled three people to safety near E Street that day and rescued two dogs that had been standing on trees to escape the rising water, with a fourth person rescued from the river shortly after.
That same 2019 flood event also stranded at least nine people on an island under the E Street bridge near the 215 Freeway, all of whom were ferried to safety using rescue rafts without injury, the outlet reported. Crews at the time said the water was deeper than anticipated, which complicated rescue efforts, and a San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department helicopter separately plucked a man from a sandbar in Redlands.
Sunday's rescue adds to that history of fast-moving water along the Santa Ana River catching people off guard, whether they were camped along the banks or caught in channels built to carry floodwater away from the city.
