O'NEILL - The O'Neill Rural Fire Department is being recognized for a harrowing rescue operation it performed during the March 2019 floods.

Governor Pete Ricketts made a stop in Holt County on Friday to present Fire Chief Terry Miles and the rest of the department with a flood hero proclamation. The award commemorates the department's rescue of a rural resident who was stranded in his home by the flood waters.

Miles says the department's training helped them to be prepared for the rescue operation.

"This is definitely a team effort, the events that happened last March were very sudden," Miles said. "We are very well-trained for a volunteer department, I'm glad we have the resources we do, and we were able to execute a successful and safe rescue."

Governor Ricketts has been recognizing individuals and public safety outfits as flood heroes over the last few months as part of the Flood Hero initiative. While Miles was pleased that O'Neill was honored, he says it took the help of plenty of other departments to keep people safe during the flooding.

"We were very honored to get recognition from the governor, and while we did a part of this, a lot of our mutual aid district was also instrumental," Miles said. "I have to give recognition to Stuart, Atkinson, Chambers, and Ewing's volunteer fire departments for coming up and assisting in the aftermath."

Miles says it's one thing to train for situations like the one O'Neill was faced with last spring, and an entirely different animal actually dealing with them, but he says the disaster will help the department be better prepared in the future.

"We had never expected anything like that, but now that it has happened we're definitely much more aware in the likelihood that it could ever happen again," Miles said.