Amphibious NSP vehicle returns to Lincoln

The Nebraska State Patrol’s amphibious Light Armor Vehicle returned to Lincoln today. It’s been out providing flood relief and emergency evacuations near Gibbon for the past 5 days, as well as Kerney.

“Sort of like ‘the Calvary’s coming,’ you know, you arrive and they’ve just been waiting and waiting and not knowing when they’re gonna get out. And we show up and we’re able to get them out, that’s a good feeling for everybody too,” Nebraska State Trooper and LAV driver, Justin Petersen said. 

The two swat teams with access to these vehicles joined at the middle of the state for the flooding.

“Since we can drive through a pretty good amount of water, more than most trucks or cars are able to do, we were able to patrol through Kerney,” Petersen said.

Most of those areas affected were rural.

“So with this vehicle, we can travel down the roads or reach farm houses or houses that may not be able to be reached by boat,” Petersen said.

This vehicle can respond in more risky areas that fire trucks cannot maneuver around or to.

“I think people are pretty happy to see us come up when they’re trying to get out, especially when there’s no way to get out,” Petersen said.

This particular vehicle returned home to Lincoln, but has served all throughout the state.

“When you hear stories about vehicles who drive down the water and fall in a hole, that’s a real important reason we tell people not to drive into floodwaters,” Petersen said.

“In this particular case where I’ve been driving it, we’re able to come up slowly to water obstacles and we can explore those without putting ourselves in danger,” Petersen said.

And this one is well equipped. Petersen showed me what equipment the vehicle was stocked with. 

“So we’ve got life jackets in here, we have ropes so we’re able to send, if we have to, go into the water and provide a rescue or any tie a rope to a harness…”

“We use it for those types of scenarios where a vehicle might have gotten trapped in floodwater and their vehicle is swamped and they’re not able to travel anymore so we have the capability to go out to them and get in swimming or walking distance to them, depending on the scenario,” Petersen said.

He says this particular vehicle is a powerful tool to help the especially needy, like the elderly and those with immobility get out of floodwaters safely.