The St. Mary Parish Sheriff’s Office Marine Section has added an airboat to their lineup of boats to use in search and rescue calls. According to the Sheriff’s Office, there have been times when boaters who are in need of assistance could not be reached due to where they were located.
Sheriff Blaise Smith says that problem has now been remedied with the addition of the airboat, “We recently added an airboat to our water patrol fleet, an addition that was desperately needed. We receive many rescue calls in which the deputies were required to leave the safety of their patrol vessel and wade in sometimes cold and muddy water to reach someone stranded on a sandbar or who had run aground. The airboat allows our deputies to reach those stranded vessels affording a better safety environment for our deputies as well as those they are trying to rescue.”