Who thought of this idea, man?
All right, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on...
Spin the water up.
(bleep)
Hold on, the water's getting higher!
Oh, (bleep)... Stop!
(siren wailing)
This might be the big one.
-MAN: Back up, back up! -Oh.
DAN:
of people in need.
-TITUS: Hey, hey. -Stay awake.
DAN:
TITUS:
-DAN:
...we've handled everything
that New Orleans can throw at us.
Don't let go.
But there's a giant network of specialized units
who run into life-threatening situations
that most EMTs never face.
♪ ♪
Now we're traveling the country...
Uh-oh! Where we going next?
-...and rolling up our sleeves...
...to prepare as they do.
-Let's go. -Oh, God.
DAN:
-TITUS: Pump it!
...first responders.
We're here in Austin, Texas.
We got a call from Dave Heintz from Austin-Travis County EMS.
He said he wanted to show us
the work that they do as first responders.
But we have no idea what we're getting into today.
This is so different from New Orleans. I can't wait.
When I think of Texas,
I think of, like, dry, flat desert-type, you know?
With the-- what's the little things that-that...
Tumbleweed.
Tumbleweeds. That's what I think of Texas.
DAN: I don't see nobody, but this is where he said to meet.
TITUS:
I'm thinking, "Oh, Lord,
We're not on Bourbon Street anymore."
All right, what are we doing?
(engine approaches)
DAN: Dude.
TITUS: Oh, my God...
All right, so it is a boat.
TITUS: Oh, that's pretty badass.
Oh, man, this is some entrance right here, huh?
DAN: How's it going?
So these dudes show up on these badass Zodiacs.
To be honest, being on the water
was the last thing I expected to be doing in Texas.
Austin, Texas? It floods here a lot.
And when it floods, it floods really, really fast.
DAVE:
because it's something that we do frequently.
Are you ready to get wet?
Y'all are gonna do it today.
Let's go get you guys dressed up.
DAN:
for a water rescue scenario.
-Just take your shoes off, step into the suit. -All right.
DAN:
and they look pretty cool.
So why does it have to be so tight?
I feel like it's cutting my circulation.
In an actual flood event,
we're keeping the contamination away from your skin.
Oh, that makes sense.
TITUS: Oh, God.
That gear is made for skinny people.
Let's just keep it a hundred.
My ass was like, "Oh, you crazy."
He does look like two pounds of sausage in a five-pound case.
-DAVE: Reach it okay? -TITUS:
'cause Dan wears skinny jeans,
so he was used to putting something skinny on his thigh.
These jeans are actually not jeans at all, they're actually
stretchy, kind of like dude yoga pants.
(laughs): Just for the record.
-Dude. You should've... -You ever seen that?
-...never told me that, man. -(laughs)
Ever.
-MAN: Y'all ready? -Yeah, we're ready.
All right, let's do this. We'll get y'all on this boat.
DAN: Yep. Very graceful.
TITUS:
Fast, powerful, fun.
But this right here is a highly specialized piece of equipment.
MATT: This is a Zodiac 420.
It gives us the ability to get in and out
-of really tight places... -TITUS: Right.
...trees, cars, fences,
to get to where they're at.
With us being right in the middle of Flash Flood Alley,
if someone's in need,
we're gonna do everything we can to get to them.
TITUS:
floods can get nasty.
We lived through Katrina.
DAN:
were America's worst years for flood deaths.
418 in total.
So the need for specialized rescue units is serious.
Well, we've had a number of really bad flooding events
in Austin over the past few years.
Probably one of our bigger ones was the 2013 Halloween floods.
There was a World War II veteran who was
trapped in his house. I drove the boat.
We couldn't see anything, the rain was coming down so hard.
We were able to secure the boat to the front porch.
Sure enough, the guy's inside, he's yelling for help.
He-he can't get the door open
because the pressure of the water was so great.
We were able to open the door, dove after him to grab him,
because the water was rushing through the house so badly.
We got him in the boat.
We were able to get pushed off.
My engine goes out.
You know, I'm a veteran,
I've been deployed a number of times.
I can honestly say that was probably
the scariest moment of my life.
I can't even imagine, man.
Fortunately, we were able to get the boat motor started back up.
We got him to the hospital.
So the-the vet, or the patient, I mean, he survived, right?
-He did survive. -Of course he did.
Actually kind of gave me goose bumps a little bit, yeah.
Thank you for your service, too.
You know, you hear a lot of these stories on the news
about the floods, but you don't hear a lot
from the first responders themselves.
And that's what we want to do, we want to share
their stories with the world.
(birds chirping)
DAN: You see that snake in the water right there?
No, I'm just bull(bleep).
Titus, you left your car over here?
TITUS: Yo, what's up with this car, man?
MATT: Guys, this is where it gets real.
DAN:
car in the water, they got the fire department
out here with their heavy duty hoses.
Something big is about to happen.
DAVE: Here in Austin, we have a lot of problems
with low water crossings
-and swift water rescues. -TITUS: Right.
And if your car goes off the road,
who's gonna come get you? We are!
We're gonna show y'all how to rescue in that environment.
DAN:
to kind of get our hands dirty.
We got all these great guys around us.
I mean, I-I felt like
things were just gonna go pretty smoothly.
Who's gonna be the victim?
One, two, three, shoot.
Ah! There you go, right there.
Wait, so what does that mean?
-Who-who... -So that means Titus gets to be the victim,
-'cause he won. -(laughter)
We're gonna put you in the car and you're just driving along,
and then, "Uh, what? What happened?
-My car's flooding." -Okay.
"I can't go anywhere. What am I gonna do?"
-Right. -You're gonna sit tight, we're gonna come get you.
You know what? I'm with you.
I heard Dave say that,
but I wasn't really listening, like, you know what I mean?
He said,
"Titus, you're gonna be in the car,"
but it really didn't compute in my mind.
-Do you want me to sit? -DAVE: Oh, yeah.
DAVE: You're going for a ride.
MATT: This is your car now.
DAN: Get in there.
MATT: You'll have to lower your head just a little bit.
This doesn't feel right.
Something told me that I was gonna be intimate
with that car for some reason,
but I just didn't know how intimate
I was gonna be with it.
-All right, you good? -Who thought of this idea, man?
He's in the scrub seat, all right.
All right, hold on, hold on, hold on.
Spin the water up.
Holy (bleep).
Make no mistake, we put Dan and Titus
into a major league scenario.
We had to use the prop, because otherwise,
there's not swift water moving.
TITUS: Hold on, man.
Hold on, hold on, hold on.
I'm always playing, you know, the rescuer.
That was the first time I actually felt
what the victim would be feeling.
I can't catch my breath, there's water in my face,
I'm thinking of my wife, my son,
I'm actually feeling that, like, oh, this is it.
Stop (bleep)... Stop!
(shouts)
Man, I freaked out.
I bounced.
I am not getting back
in that (bleep) ever.
You all right? Just take a breath.
As his partner, I wanted to clown him
for getting out the car.
You know, as his friend,
I could tell he was legitimately panicked.
DAVE: So it's scary. It's scary.
One of the things that was hardest
to get across to our guys is to not panic.
-Right. -To be calm.
If I go in with you the next time, will you go back in?
TITUS: That would be a negative, Ghost Rider.
Jesus Christ himself could be sitting in that passenger seat.
-(laughter) -I am not getting back in that car.
DAN: Well, that's easy. I'll get in the car,
-you rescue me. -All right, man. We'll do that, then.
-How about that? Hey. Easy. -All right.
There we go. A'ight.
DAN:
to be a part of this water rescue scenario.
So if I got to take one for the team, that's what I'm gonna do.
I see why he freaked out. I'm already freaking out.
Roll it.
(bleep)
We're gonna do a wedge formation.
Bob's gonna be in your right ear,
Finch is gonna be in your left ear.
Their job is gonna be to pull you down.
Walk it back, nice and easy, Titus.
TITUS:
We have one guy at the front, and we make a wedge behind him.
It's sort of like a stack of bowling pins.
That breaks up the water,
and it makes the water behind the wedge calmer.
And that makes it safer
for us to do our job.
BOB: All right, Titus.
FINCH: All right, you're doing good.
TITUS:
I'm at the front of the wedge getting slapped in the face
with something like 200 psi.
It ain't fun. It's actually scary.
But then again, so is actually being in a flash flood.
DAVE: Beautiful.
TITUS:
is to save someone's life, and your job
is to protect your teammates.
You have to put that fear to the side.
-Titus, get low. -Get lower!
-Yes! -There you go. -You got it.
-There you go, you got it. -There you go.
-Dunk your head. -We're right behind you.
Dunk your head, Titus...
BOB: Hey, we got you, man.
DAN:
why Titus bailed out.
That's a very scary and surreal experience.
When they got to the side of the car, it was almost like
that feeling of, like, relief.
Going to a half...
I know. You're good, you're good.
DAN:
they can be in that environment.
They pulled me out into the middle of that V pattern,
and it was like I was standing in a swimming pool.
There really was no pressure.
It worked exactly like they said it was gonna work.
-BOB: Left! Left! -Look at that.
All right. Going forward, Titus.
(cheering)
Well done, man. Well done.
Come on up. You're a rescuer now, man.
TITUS:
experiences I ever had.
But it made me look at first responders
in an entire different way.
And, like, it was all-- it was, I felt like one.
-That's... -Like, you know what I mean?
He-he was letting me know what was going on in the back.
-So I just felt like one group. -DAVE: And that's what we do here.
We work as a team.
Mad respect for everything you guys do.
-It's hard, man. -DAN:
in a special area.
And these guys are doing unbelievable stuff,
you know, and my...
my hat's off to them.
-Thank you again, Dave, I appreciate it. -Titus.
Well done. Well done, man.
TITUS:
they think of a guy in back of a truck.
These Austin-Travis special op guys,
they prove it goes way beyond that.
-TITUS: Good looking out, Matt. -Hey, you, too, man. Good job.
Those paramedics are the truth.
-My drawers a little wet. -Yeah. Uh-- hey, I'm glad
we wearing their shorts right now, not mine.
TITUS: Oh, my God.
Y'all think y'all can give us a ride back to our truck?
DAVE: Yeah.
TITUS: That car's had better days, dawg.
-DAN: I think you had that same car. -(laughter)
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