By Rick Wright

Staff Writer 

The calls come at all hours and they all carry the same urgency.

For nearly 25 years, they’ve been answered by the Cape Elizabeth Water Extrication Team, a group of 20 men, women and teenagers who scale cliffs and search the seas with one goal: saving lives.

Of all the rescues conducted by the team, helping people who have fallen off rocks at Fort Williams is among the most difficult challenges, said Cape Elizabeth Fire Chief Peter Gleeson.

“That’s always a significant operation to us. Those can be very manpower intensive operations trying to get somebody up off the rocks depending on where they fell at the fort. We seem to have a couple of those every year,” Gleeson said. 

“We do water and cliff rescues. That’s one of our specialties,” said John Norton, captain of the team.

Last month, the team helped the U.S. Coast Guard base in South Portland search for two female kayakers lost in Casco Bay. 

 WET members and firefighters searched the entire Cape Elizabeth shoreline by foot throughout the night while other members combed waters off the town’s coast in their 19-foot rescue boat.

Team members beached at Ram Island for a land search and circled Richmond Island during the search at sea, Gleeson said. 

WET members in the boat found one of the kayaks drifting empty about one mile off Trundy Point in Cape Elizabeth.

The next morning, Coast Guard searchers found the bodies of the two women about three miles southeast of Cape Elizabeth.

Norton remembers one particularly bad day in September 2007 when, during a bad storm, the team got three calls in one day. Three men went overboard off the Cape Elizabeth coast when two lobster boats and one kayak capsized. Two of the men managed to swim to shore. 

WET members searched until midnight for the third man to no avail. Several days later, his body washed up on Crescent Beach.

Last April, team members also helped rescue a man who had fallen 20 feet at Fort Williams while climbing 80-foot cliffs – the highest in the park – without professional climbing equipment.

Team members rigged ropes that allowed firefighters and emergency medical technicians to lift the injured man to the top of the cliffs in a stokes basket, or stretcher, so he could be transported to the hospital.

When rescue workers arrived, the man was on the rocks just above the beach at low tide, Gleeson said.

The climber was lucky:  He was treated at the scene for a broken wrist and taken to Maine Medical Center in Portland.

“It was a routine operation for us. We didn’t have any extraordinary challenges with it,” Gleeson said after the incident. “It was in a place that was accessible. We had plenty of room. We were not challenged by any tide issues.” 

The team is comprised of teenagers, both men and women, commercial fishermen and others, said Gleeson, who oversees the company. All members are volunteers. 

Norton was encouraged to join the team 13 years ago by his son Michael, then 16, a volunteer at Cape Elizabeth Fire Department. Today, Michael is a full-time professional firefighter in South Portland. 

“It’s a great bunch of people. You get all walks of life on the team. It is exciting at times. It’s helping people when they need it,” Norton said. 

Norton is a certified diver and emergency medical technician. He also works full time as a service technician at Pape Chevrolet in South Portland.

As captain of the team, Norton oversees all aspects of a rescue operation until he is relieved of command by a superior officer in the fire department.

The team specializes in surface water and high-angle rescues. A skilled and well-trained group with 20 regular members, the team is one of five companies attached to the town’s fire department.

 To keep their rescue skills sharp, team members do core training twice a month throughout the year.

Most of the team’s core training is done by team members, Norton said. Core training covers communications (marine and fire department radios), knot tying, line tending for swimmers, basic boat trailering, small boat handling and basic rescue work in the water.

Most training sessions take place in Cape Elizabeth. The team also trains in Scarborough and the Saco River in Standish for swift-water training. Each training program runs three to four hours, Norton said.

“With what they do, you want to make sure the people are well-trained because it’s certainly a high-risk operation being out there in the boat, doing high-angle rescue and that sort of stuff,” Gleeson said. “They’re a very talented group.”

The team stores its equipment inside a command van parked behind the town center fire station. It also owns a fleet of three inflatable boats. The largest is a 19-foot rigid hull inflatable with a 150-horsepower outboard engine. All of the team’s equipment and boats are ready for immediate use so the team can quickly respond to any emergency.

The team answers 25 to 30 calls each year. That number has remained steady throughout the years, according to the fire chief.

The team’s next training session is Saturday, June 19, at Fort Williams Park.

Training sessions, live rescues and open houses are good recruiting tools for the WET team, Gleeson said. After seeing the team in action, members of the public are sometimes so inspired they ask to join.

“People will see us at calls. They see us in training and we always talk to them. We do two open houses per year. We always let people see the boats and the equipment. If anybody expresses any interest, we latch right on to them,” Gleeson said.

Rick Wright can be reached at 282-4337, ext. 237 or news@inthesentry.com.