James Warnet

James is a third generation firefighter with almost 20 years of service, and is a current fire Lieutenant for Mahwah Fire Rescue Co #1 as well as a lead SCUBA diver and supervisor for the Co #1 dive team.

Night Dive Drill

For our Wednesday night (3/22/23) drill, we took to the Ramapo river for some practice night diving in current. Not only did our divers get more time in the water (which they are always happy about) but they worked on perfecting a new search technique that will allow the divers to methodically search a body of water, even with a decent current.

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Edison Road Entrapment

At 7:45 this morning (02/23/23), Mahwah FD stations 1, 2, and 4 were dispatched to the intersection of Edison Road and Leighton Place for a motor vehicle accident between a garbage truck and a box truck, with the box truck driver being trapped in the vehicle. This is the third entrapment for Rescue 1 in the last 45 days, with the previous 2 entrapments happening just six days apart. Like clockwork, the firefighters of Station’s 2 & 4 deployed a protective hose line and assisted, while the firefighters of Co 1 went to work extricating the driver. Despite the driver’s legs being tightly trapped by the crushed-in cab of the truck, the driver was freed and turned over to Mahwah EMS in just under 13 minutes.

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Dive Team Recovers Cell Phone

On Sunday, June 6th, the Co # 1 Dive Team received a call from Mahwah PD asking if our divers were available to search for a cell phone a Mahwah resident had just lost in Winter’s Pond, right under the bridge. Happy to help, we offered to deploy a diver to quickly check under the bridge in the area the resident thought the phone went, hoping for a quick find. The ambient temperature was over 90-degrees that day, so we limited operational time for diver safety. After submerging, the diver discovered that the base of the spillway dam under the bridge was packed with over a foot of branches and silt, making searching difficult. Despite searching for over 30 minutes, the search was called off in favor of coming back later in the week with more resources. On Wednesday, June 9th, the full dive team assembled for our regular drill

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MFD Co#1 Divers Complete UCI Course

This past weekend, a few MFD Co#1 SCUBA divers completed Mike Berry’s renowned Underwater Criminal Investigator course through his certification agency UCI Divers. Widely considered the gold standard UCI course, the four day program represents Mike’s thoroughly impressive 40 year career in law enforcement and recovering evidence underwater. As members of the North Jersey Regional SCUBA Task Force, the MFD Co#1 dive team combines resources with other dive teams around Bergen County to offer the highest degree of service to our residents. This certification means MFD Co#1 divers use their extensive dive skills to assist law enforcement in prosecuting cases where evidence is tossed in the water.

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