MIDVILLE, Ga. (WJBF) – The Midville Police Department received a Humvee from a government program about a month ago.

Police Chief Clayton Green told NewsChannel 6 it will help out people who live on and visit the Ogeechee River in the event of flooding.

Flooding is common at the four river landings in town when it rains.

It happened a couple months ago.

“One of the river landings, I went down there to just do a regular check of the neighborhood, and there were three houses I couldn’t get to because water was flooding and washed out in the road,” Chief Green said. “We drive Ford Explorers and if I would’ve attempted it, it wouldn’t have been good.”

As a solution, Chief Green turned to what is called the 1033 program.

“I reached out to the representative and was able to get this four-wheel drive Humvee at no cost to the tax payers, city, or police department,” he said.

Humvee, or HMMWV, stands for High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle. 

And that’s exactly what they’re using it for.

“It’s got four-wheel drive, it can go through water, you can see up there at the passenger side that snorkel up there that’s about how deep it can go in water,” Chief Green said. “Hopefully I ain’t going to drive in water that deep. If we need to go pull somebody out of the river, we got two straps.”

Many people go fishing and boating on the river. If there’s an accident, it could be used for rescue missions.

“The back of it is wide enough where you can have a stretcher in there,” Chief Green said. “And I’ve been in contact with EMA here at station four, and we have an agreement where if they have a patient and we need to get them out of there and they can’t get down there with an ambulance, their stretcher can fit in the back of this thing.”

The department will also be picking up a generator from the program on Wednesday, and has a request in for two M-16 rifles.