The river work: the dive team and the water-rescue course

1989–2026 · AT DOCUMENTED SIZE

The capability, documented: The St. Joseph River is the city's spine, and the fire department's river record in the record reached is a capability record more than an incident record. Its apparatus anchor is a dive truck: the department's retired-apparatus roster carries a 1989 Ford F-800/Marion walk-in dive rescue — a purpose-built dive-rescue vehicle in service by 1989, printed at the enthusiast roster's strength. The team itself surfaces in the Tribune's record in 2000, practicing under the ice of the pond behind the Village Green modular home park on 12th Street — divers searching underwater on ropes of 100 and 200 feet, the longer-line diver circling smaller until the partner was found: a working dive team's training, documented as it was done.

The river's rescues, as the record gives them: Two documented river incidents show the work divided as the record divides it, and both are printed with their divisions kept. In 2005 two teenagers who had gone into the fish ladder along the north bank at Central Park to retrieve a fishing pole became trapped in it and were rescued — the Tribune's photograph shows a Mishawaka police lieutenant, Brian Costa, helping one of the teens: the police department on the riverbank, in the water work, as the departments' river duties meet.

The present statement: The department's own present page carries "water rescue and technical rescue" among its primary responsibilities, beside suppression, prevention, investigation, EMS, hazardous materials and education — the river course stated by the department itself as standing work. The dive team's founding date is not in the record reached; it stands documented by its 1989 truck and its 2000 training, and the founding stands as a named gap, its settling sources the department's own records and the Tribune's archive.

Sources:

1. Firefighting Wiki, Mishawaka Fire Department retired-apparatus record (enthusiast-maintained) — the 1989 Ford F-800/Marion walk-in dive rescue; also the retired 1970 Dodge D300 rescue and 1975 American LaFrance Pioneer.
2. South Bend Tribune, 2000, in the Mishawaka-area library's newspaper record — the Mishawaka Fire Department dive team practicing under ice at the Village Green pond, 12th Street.
3. South Bend Tribune, 2005 and 2007, in the same record — the two teens rescued from the Central Park fish ladder, Lt. Brian Costa of the Mishawaka Police Department assisting; the 2007 recovery of Troy Reasonover by Granger Underwater Services divers after a two-hour search.
4. City of Mishawaka, Fire and EMS department page (read November 2026) — water rescue and technical rescue among the department's primary responsibilities.