Encina Power Plant Channel Comes to Rescue for Trainees

Some San Diego County fire departments have found a new place to hone their swift-water rescue skills: the man-made channel that serves San Diego Gas & Electric Co.’s Encina Power Plant in Carlsbad.

A mixture of seawater and water from the plant’s cooling system is pumped back to the ocean at more than 6 m.p.h.--fast enough for firefighters to practice their rescue techniques, said Capt. Lawrence Sukay, training officer for the Elfin Forest-Harmony Grove Fire Department.

Sukay’s department organized a rescue program that concluded June 13 with the Carlsbad training. Eighteen firefighters received their state swift-water rescue certification, 10 of them from the Elfin Forest-Harmony Grove department, Sukay said. The San Diego, Encinitas, Deer Springs and Rainbow fire departments also participated.

The SDG&E; site is used for training by the Navy SEALS and San Diego County sheriff’s search and rescue teams, Sukay said.

“It’s the only source available in San Diego County,” Sukay said. “We’re either in a feast or famine mode here--swift-water flooding or puddles.”

Sukay’s team plans to do follow-up training in September and to sponsor a new rescue course next February, he said.

Although the channel doesn’t present certain challenges, such as strong currents and submerged rocks and trees, that a flooded river would, Sukay said it allows his team to practice rescues from land and water.

“It’s more along the lines of what you’d have in a flood channel,” he said.

However, the city of San Diego’s River Rescue Team will continue to travel yearly to Northern California or Idaho rivers to train.

“It is critical to us to find conditions that would be similar to San Diego rivers in a high flood stage,” San Diego Lifeguard Lt. Marshall Parks said. “We want our people to have an opportunity to train in swift-moving water with hazards similar to what we would find out here. It’s essentially impossible to duplicate those conditions locally.”