NorthWest EMS water rescue team members (from left) Robert Throop, Mark Stauffer, Jim Gallagher and Scott George in front of the National Guard tank used in Montgomery County.

While many of us spent last weekend watching the Weather Channel as Hurricane Irene moved up the East Coast, more than 80 Western Pennsylvania residents were deployed to the eastern part of the state. Among them were four men from NorthWest EMS trained in swift water and flood rescue, and members of the regional rescue team created to respond to water-related emergencies.

Once the men hit Harrisburg, 40 were sent into the northern section of Pennsylvania, while the other 40 -- including the NorthWest team -- headed right into the storm in the area of Montgomery County, just south of Philadelphia.

Things were pretty quiet until about 11:30 Saturday night, said team member Scott George, who also is a volunteer firefighter for Ben Avon. From that time until nearly 6 a.m., teams of eight responded to nonstop calls to rescue people trapped in their homes by flooding as a result of the torrential downpour of rain that accompanied Irene. George said that entire apartment buildings of people who failed to accurately predict the impact of the storm on the area’s waterways had to be rescued by boat.

“It was nonstop craziness,” George said, as small creeks grew to 10 times their original size, filled with “raging rapids.”

As Sunday morning dawned, the nature of the calls changed a bit, he said, from people trapped in their homes to people who came out to see the flooding and became trapped in the rapidly-moving waters. Manned boats -- including two from the NorthWest fleet -- were accompanied by National Guard tanks as rescuers pulled people from cars and trees.

At one point, George said, one of the tanks actually became stuck in the water and had to be pulled out by another tank.

As the storm quickly moved out of the area, rescuers from this area deployed by the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency (PEMA) returned to their homes by Sunday night.

The NorthWest crew is getting plenty of experience in water rescues as part of the county response team. Not only do they respond to calls throughout Western Pennsylvania when needed, but their presence along the Ohio River in this area puts them on the front lines of river emergencies. Just a couple weeks before heading into Hurricane Irene, NorthWest rescued two men from a boat that crashed head first into the Emsworth Dam located in the back channel of the river near Neville Island.