St Louis County Rescue Squad

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Duluth, MN
St Louis County Rescue Squad

Serving the residents of St. Louis County and Northeast Minnesota since 1958.
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Duluth Office: 5735 Old Miller Trunk Hwy, Duluth, MN 55811
Virginia Office: 7827 Hwy 135, Virginia, MN 55792
Phone: (Duluth) 218.625.3961
Phone: (Virginia) 218.471.7850

08/28/2026

If your up right now go take a look at the moon and catch the eclipse action! Our pizza table banter was interrupted this evening with a “hey the eclipse started” of course we all had to go take a look.

08/25/2026

Freckles sampling the air during a recent search. Nav/com Scott (7398) grabbed this video during a short pause. Our K9 teams are made up of a minimum of K9, handler, and navigation and communication (nav/com) during missions. The nav/com handles all things related to communication with command or other teams along with mapping and marking points of interest and generally anything that can be done to help the handler and K9 to focus on their job. The K9 obviously has a sole mission to find the missing person and the handler interprets and guides their dogs actions. That being a very simplistic description of the team. Freckles, trained as a live-find air scent canine, along with her handler Jenny (7372) are one of the best teams many of us have ever seen. Being in the field while they are working is just incredible to watch. During this recent search our drone team actually made the find of the missing person, but Jenny and Freckles have an excellent find record and we are incredibly grateful they are part of the squad!

08/20/2026

Two Duluth icons sharing a beautiful Minnesota afternoon and evening. Scott (7389) grabbed this fantastic pic yesterday of the Sundew lined up for departure underneath the lift bridge out to the calm waters of Lake Superior ahead. Scott was out providing medical standby with Dani (7316) and applicant June.

Folks the weather has been ideal for fishing and boating on one of our 10,000 lakes. The forecast looks to remain this way for a while. Don't forget to wear your life jacket and if your heading out on the big lake don't forget all the Coast Guard requirements as well.

08/17/2026

A little look behind the scenes tonight. This thermal drone shot from around 150' up is the culmination of quite a bit of things. The call - someone is in a bit of a jam out on a river. The response Sheriff Deputies and Rescue Squad Members respond to the closest bridge and start making a plan to find and rescue the individual. The dispatchers through training and skill have given the field team a reasonable area to search with phone location ping with 50m of accuracy from around an hr previous. The deputies on scene before us have a great amount of intel ready to share with squad members. The phone ping is entered into our mapping program SARTOPO which gives us a pretty good area to start looking. SARTOPO implemented by our techy folks along with all members receiving training and learning to use out in the field. The drone operators with remote pilot certificates and trained skills start searching the river as others start gathering intel from the surrounding homeowners. Arriving at nearly the same time is little Z we mentioned in a recent post. All of our equipment needs to be maintained and run regularly to ensure no issues when the page comes, along with regular training that makes running the boat at night a safe and capable operation. The individual was located by the drones and little Z had already been carried down to the river and prepped for launch by several of the joint team. The boat team launches down river with the drones providing overwatch and helpful intel. The individual is brought onto little Z and brought back to the launch area where a team waits to help bring everyone and the boat back on shore safely. Everyone is checked out and the boat recovered. After the individual is checked out the team digs into the coolers for water and snack that has been stocked by other members of the team sometime previously for just such a midnight call. The team heads back to quarters, fuel topped off in case another call comes out. Rehab is done the next day to make everything battle ready again by another part of the team. This call was between 2-3 hours long, the "pointy end of the spear" was only a handful of people, but we couldn't do what we do without every member of the squad, deputies, dispatchers and other EMS partners we work with and the hours of prep, training, and rehab. There was likely 50-75 people that had a part in making this a successful call. Next time you see an emergency response on the side of the road, or in this case the side of the river don't forget about all the folks on the front end and the back end not just the ones you see there. We greatly appreciate all the support the community gives us and we thought you might enjoy a little look behind the scenes on a recent call.

08/13/2026

Our patch continues to get around. This time a little closer to home, but no less of an adventure. Dani (7316) snaps a pic of our patch in front of the Isle Royale sign on a recent adventure.

08/08/2026

The crew recovers the zodiac out of the St Louis River last night after a successful rescue. Our small zodiacs are the perfect boat to be able to hand carry into challenging bodies of water and have a reliable rescue platform. Diana 7337, Alex 7376, and Matt 7329 muscle it onto the guide rails of a homeowners boat launch. It was a challenging but good night.

08/07/2026

"Car!" Squad members pause their throw bag training while the highway maintenance truck comes through our "river" tonight. The wind threw our boat night training for a loop. While not strong enough to stop a rescue if needed, the wind would not have been very helpful for a training night. So we switched over to several land based training modules to keep the rust off our skills including throw bags, extrication tools, and winching.

08/04/2026

Friends, squad members will be at 14 National Night Out events around the county this evening. We hope to see you out enjoying the beautiful weather and comradery. If you see us out, snap a pic and drop it in the comments! Bonus points for getting the fun equipment we are bringing in the background.

08/03/2026

Squad members were out today like many of you enjoying the beautiful Minnesota weather on the lake. We however were watching over the swimmers participating in this year's Buzz Ryan Triathlon instead of jigging for walleyes.

Folks, if you live in St. Louis County you may have seen our annual fundraiser in your mailbox in the past couple of weeks. We usually announce when it comes out but it was hitting your mailbox about the time of the wildfires. We felt the wildfire communication was more important than our annual fundraiser. That being said we want you to know we couldn't do what we do without your support and generous donations. Your support and donations help us do what we do. Whether it be a car accident, missing hunter, water emergency, event support, tools, or training your dollars matter. If you have already sent a donation, Thank You! If you haven't we'd love for you to consider donating to the Rescue Squad. If you live outside the county you can still support us through our web donation link below.

https://www.slcrs.org/donations

Bill J (7160) photo

07/23/2026

We don't have any helicopters in our stable much to the chagrin of several of our members. HOWEVER we partner with some of the best agencies in the country to help expedite folks out of a jam to a higher level of care. Lifelink, North Memorial Air Care, and the State Patrol MART team throughout the year all have some level of interaction with us both in training and real world calls. Occasionally the MN national guard and MN DNR rotary aircraft end up participating as well. We thrive on jumping into action and helping folks out, but the reality is sometimes the helicopter is the best tool for the job. That's when we ask our partners to jump into action with us. We often have plan B and C in motion to help folks if the helicopter doesn't work out whether it's weather, mechanical issues, or just plain dumb luck. This often leads to a canoe crew halfway to the person needing help turning around or an ATV ride to nowhere. This is all to say when the call comes out we often have several different plans in motion to help folks and usually defer to the most efficient answer on how to solve the problem. We couldn't do what we do without the help of these partner agencies and their equipment.

Below photo is Diana (7337) watching Lifelink dust off after a recent ATV incident. Dani (7316) photo.

Address

5735 Old Miller Trunk Highway
Duluth, MN
55811

Telephone

+12186253961

Website

https://www.slcrs.org/donations

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