The June floods that inundated cities across Cameron County taught emergency responders a valuable lesson about a 20-ton vehicle the Sheriff’s Department tried to use for high-water rescues.
The massive mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicle, or MRAP, is just too heavy for Cameron County’s rural roads.
“It was too heavy in that situation. It was on a narrow rural county road and those roads aren’t necessarily designed for a 20-ton vehicle, and you add in the water and you add in the potential balance issues and it was a dangerous situation for the vehicle itself,” Cameron County Judge Eddie Treviño said Monday.
The solution to high-water rescues, however, was parked just behind Treviño and Cameron County Sheriff Omar Lucio in two imposing 2.5-ton vehicles and another 5-ton vehicle parked behind it that the county purchased for $22,000 to assist in high-water rescues should the county be struck by a hurricane this season or experience another massive flooding event like the one in June that resulted in approximately 200 rescues.
Treviño said Lucio, Deputy Chief Gustavo Reyna Jr. and staff at the Cameron County Sheriff’s Department were able to find the surplus military vehicles for sale in San Antonio and that Commissioners Court acted quickly to purchase the vehicles, which are in high demand in coastal regions from Brownsville all the way to New Orleans.
“We realized it was an opportunity we did not want to miss out on,” Treviño said.
The purchase is a plus for Cameron County because emergency responders are in short supply of high-profile vehicles to make it through flood waters to conduct high-water rescues.
A more complete version of this story is available at www.myBrownsvilleHerald.com
