Members of the Massachusetts District 14 Tech Rescue Team spent part of the morning at the South Natick dam area to perform rope rescue training drills across the Charles River. Singly, a few team members were sent out on ropes strung across the waterfall side of the spillway, while their colleagues on either side of South Natick Dam Park kept the operation safe.

A Natick Fire Department (NFD) vehicle was parked on the Bacon Free Library side, where about a dozen members of the Rescue Team worked the ropes while a safety-harnessed volunteer made his way to the middle of the spillway. On the Pleasant Street side a Hopkinton FD vehicle was parked, and about a dozen more trainees worked in tandem with those on the Bacon Free Library side.

Here are some pics:

South Natick dam, fire department — This shot is from a Bacon Free Library window.

When asked by a team member if I wanted to give it a try, I was ready to go, but turns out they didn’t need an extra volunteer after all. Too bad. Me, in a skirt, traversing the raging waters of a late-winter Charles River on a cold, windy day would have been a highlight of my journalistic career.

The South Natick dam yule log of December 2021 is no longer perched atop the spillway, but we can’t blame (or credit) the MA District 14 Tech Rescue Team for that…we noticed its absence a couple of weeks ago.