A vehicle driven into the Thames River last weekend has been pulled from the water following a process that was considered pretty risky by first responders.
A 33-year-old London woman was driving down Town Line Road in Dover Township Sunday night when she lost control of the vehicle, sliding off the road and into the water. She was able to escape from the submerged vehicle and swim to safety, police said.
Chatham-Kent Fire Assistant Chief Chris Case said on Tuesday it was a tricky operation to remove a submerged car from a waterway.
"It was done very slowly and very methodically," Case said. "The team worked extremely well. We're one of the very few fire departments in Canada and North America that has a dive team. In circumstances like this, it's not the easiest thing to do, but the team performed extremely well."
The vehicle remained submerged all day Monday and wasn't taken out until Tuesday because there was no one else inside and posed no threat, according to Case.
"If we get a call there is someone inside the vehicle then we have a dive emergency response where we get in and we search the vehicle," Case said. "In this circumstance, we were told there was no one in the vehicle and we were waiting for a request to remove the vehicle."
Case added his team was able to locate the vehicle using sonar on the boat. He said they located it pretty quickly, although it wasn't in the area they thought it would be considering how the car entered the water. The vehicle was found on its roof at the bottom of the river and a diver was sent down to attach a line to pull it back onto dry land.
