To the Editor:

Yesterdays incident at Waddington beach was a great example of how the North Country comes together in a time of need.

No words can explain how grateful I am to all the agency's that arrived in Waddington in a short amount of time.

Divers from across the county, state police, border patrol, DEC, village officials, town officials, rescue and fire and probably more that I didn't see.

Within 30 minutes more than 50 people were on the scene to help find a child that was or was not missing. Helicopters and airplanes arrived soon after.

The fact that it wasn't confirmed that a child was missing didn't matter to anyone.

Everyone did their job with the assumption there was. The parents of all the lifeguards at the beach should be very proud of the way their kids responded to the incident.

They were very responsible and utilized their training very well.

My fire department crew did an excellent job starting a preliminary search until divers could arrive and getting the scene organized.

I'm very proud of all of them. Thank you to all that helped.

Its nice to know that when its needed all of us can come together and work well as a team to accomplish great things.

Dustin Haenel, Assistant Chief, WVFD