Wilmington Police get hurricane-durable rescue vehicles

NEW HANOVER COUNTY, NC (WWAY NEWS) — Wilmington Police said they learned several lessons during Hurricane Florence, and refuse to be in the same condition this upcoming season.

Last month they received two vehicles durable enough to drive in up to three feet of water to rescue people.

Assistant Chief Donny Williams said collectively, the four wheel drive trucks costs more than a million dollars and will primarily be used for hurricane season as rescue vehicles.

Williams said the city received these former military vehicles through a law enforcement program from the Department of Defense.

“One of the steps that we’ve already taken, is we have officers in our department that have commercial drivers license due to our mobile command center and they’re already familiar with driving large, heavy vehicles, so we made the decision to assign these vehicles to that unit,” Williams said.

He expressed that the trucks no longer have certain military equipment that that they’d need, and that they’ll soon be painted black and white to match the patrol cars.

We’re told an emergency technician will also be on board once the trucks are deployed.