As Flash Floods Get Meaner, Mid-Missouri Fire Crews Retrain for the Water

If you’ve watched a summer storm turn a low-water crossing near the river bottoms into something you wouldn’t want to cross, you already understand why Columbia Fire Department and the Boone County Fire Protection District have spent this summer retraining for water.

Columbia firefighters have picked up two new rescue boats and sent staff around the country for swift-water training, according to KBIA and the Columbia Missourian. Crews now check flood-prone roads and streams ahead of storms and keep swim gear, life jackets, and boats staged and ready to go. The push follows a run of extreme rainfall events that both outlets say has grown more common over roughly the past three decades — and a 2024 water rescue on Bear Creek that ended in a firefighter’s death.

Columbia Fire Chief Brian Schaeffer isn’t interested in litigating why the weather’s changed. “We’re not going to argue about whether it’s climate change or not,” he told KBIA. “The reality is it is changing.”

The numbers back up the retraining: Columbia Fire has responded to roughly five water rescues so far this year, and the Boone County Fire Protection District handles about half a dozen or more most years. The National Weather Service has issued a flash-flood warning somewhere in Missouri almost every week since April, per KBIA.

Why it matters out here

None of this happens inside city limits by accident. Rocheport and the rest of unincorporated Boone County sit in exactly the low-lying, river-bottom terrain both departments call highest-risk — the kind of stretch along the Missouri where a few fast-moving inches of water can float a vehicle before a driver realizes the road’s already gone. If a storm rolls through, these are the crews, and the new boats, that would answer the call out here.

The U.S. Coast Guard’s boating-safety guidance says the same thing paddlers already hear every MR340 season: moving water is stronger than it looks, and a life jacket is the one piece of gear good judgment can’t replace. If a low-water crossing looks high or fast, the safest move — on foot, in a car, or in a boat — is to turn around.