Last week, I was assigned to do hurricane Harvey flood rescues. as a result of this, I spend almost 36 hours wearing a duty belt that was submerged in flood water over and over again. During this period, I was carrying a gun I keep around entirely for these sorts of operations, namely and early Gen 3 Glock 19. The weapon and spare magazines were loaded with 124 +P 9mm Federal HST's. The water I was in was not salty, but was contaminated with a variety of substances I prefer not to spend too much time thinking about (think required tetanus shot and prophylactic antibiotics this week). Here is a summary of my observations from this:

1 The ammo held up well. After this, I assumed at lease some of it was compromised, so I stopped by the range and shot all of it out of a Beretta 92F this week. Every single one of the 46 rounds I was carrying fired exactly as designed, with no apparent loss of accuracy of velocity.

2. My TLR-1 still worked and was dry inside when I changed the batteries

3. The Glock had some very light surface rust on the slide, inside and out, the barrel looked like it sustained no damage, There was some brown stuff in the striker channel (I assume rust from the striker spring) and the sights had some light surface corrosion (Ameriglo Spartan operator sights). Other than that, it was in pretty good shape.

3. My Safariland 6280 (STX size 832) shows no effects. dried out overnight after I was finally able to get home, the hood functions fine, the suede didn't de-laminate and it doesn't even stink.

All of my clothes received a Viking funeral. My Waders were abandoned early on as they kept filling up due to excessive water depth

Got any tips for those of us who might have to deal with something similar sometime in the future? Things that worked/didn't work? Helpful tricks?

quote:

Originally posted by RogueJSK:
Got any tips for those of us who might have to deal with something similar sometime in the future? Things that worked/didn't work? Helpful tricks?

No, not really, it was alot easier to deal with once I embraced the suck and stopped trying to stay dry.

At least the water was relatively warm for the first two days. Once we got into lake water dumped out of dams upstream, the water cooled off considerably and it became possible to get quite cold.

Thanks for this practical info, and thank you even more for your efforts.

Great post.

I would suggest one thing. When working around water, add a lanyard to your duty rig.

Thank you for responding to our fellow countrymen and women in a time of desperate need! You, and others like you, are what makes this the greatest country on Earth. (I include all emergency responders and our military in that group.)

Hurricane Irma is looking to make more rescue and recovery work forthcoming.

Stay safe!

Thanks for all you have done and for the report.

Can't say I'm surprise - you have solid equipment known for reliability under harsh conditions.

Stay safe!

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First off thank you for all you did and have been through. Hope you haven't been effected personally by everything that's happened down there. We had a guy take a trip through a nasty canal here and his striker channel also came out pretty gross when we popped it open. Thanks for the gear report, I'm pleasantly surprised to hear about the ammo. Stay safe for the post disaster looting everyone seems so fond of.

Thank you and be careful.

That was interesting car. God bless you for doing that work. And a great testament to Glock pistols, though I still don't like them. But, I should probably get one because I'd never want to put my sig or cz in the drink. What I'm even more impressed with is that your HST ammo didn't let any water in. That's impressive. I wonder if they seal their ammo ? I don't think all manufacturers do. I don't know if Federal does either with their exceptional HST line of cartridges. Great choice in both gun and ammo for your mission.

Take care and God Bless.

First of all, a big Thank You for what you do.

I'd just like to add a comment about ammo:
I had a P225 magazine loaded with Hornady Critical Defence 115 gr. ammo go through the washer and dryer.
My wife found it in my pants pocket when she was folding them.
I took it to the range and every single cartridge fired without issue