Yet you'd be surprised how many times you see firefighters out in flood waters in their turnouts. Attach a sturdy knife and a whistle to your PFD, and a signal light for night operations. You can't appreciate the power of moving water unless you've felt it pushing against your body. Like firefighting, you can't learn it from reading a book or watching a video. After all, many agencies already have specialty water rescue teams such as dive teams.
Flash floods come and go in a hurry, but they often swamp cities and even whole regions.
Two recent floods, one on Kansas City and the other in Ft. Collins, CO, are good examples. Both floods lasted less than eight hours, but during that time there were literally hundreds of incidents. Some people were rescued, and some were not. While the flooding in Ft.