Mastic Beach and Center Moriches Fire Departments Cross-Train on Complex Maritime Incidents

Mastic Beach, NY - Volunteer firefighters and maritime rescue personnel from the Mastic Beach and Center Moriches fire departments spent their holiday weekend honing critical offshore operational skills during a comprehensive joint water rescue exercise on Sunday morning in eastern Suffolk County.

Taking place on September 6, the collaborative drill brought both agency crews into the bay to synchronize procedures as active members of the Moriches Bay Incident Response Team. The multi-department evolution tested personnel through diverse, high-stress maritime emergencies requiring seamless interoperability, cross-departmental communications, and specialized vessel maneuvers.

Throughout the morning, emergency teams navigated single- and multi-victim retrieval drills, practiced the deployment of rescue swimmers from both motorized watercraft and personal watercraft, and executed vessel-to-vessel transfers of simulated unconscious casualties using Zodiacs, rigid-hull boats, and Jet Skis. The exercise culminated in a full-scale mass-casualty scenario simulating a vessel collision with a pier, forcing responders to coordinate triage, waterborne extraction, and shoreside transport logistics for multiple victims suffering varying traumatic injuries.

Department officials underscored that dedicating holiday downtime to rigorous offshore drills ensures that mutual aid partners maintain muscle memory, unified command clarity, and shared operational capabilities when real-world distress calls arise across the Moriches Bay waterway network.