BALTIMORE — A Fourth of July weekend marked by sweltering heat and severe storms was especially busy for Baltimore County emergency officials, who made nearly a dozen rescues in area waterways.

Two people tubing on the Big Gunpowder Falls near the Warren Road Bridge in Cockeysville got stuck in the mud around 8 p.m. Friday, prompting an aerial hoist rescue by a Maryland State Police helicopter.

On Saturday, officials responded to about 10 water rescues in the Back and Middle rivers — including six people pulled from a capsized boat near Hart Miller Island, according to Fran Harker, chief marine engineer for the Bowleys Quarters Volunteer Fire Department Marine Emergency Team 21.

Harker, who retired from the Baltimore County Fire Department after more than three decades, said his team had three boats staffed and on the water ahead of the Middle River fireworks. Seeing storms rolling in, he headed to safe harbor on Frog Mortar Creek to wait them out.

But the crews didn’t wait long. The radio started to “explode” with mayday calls and reports of vessels in distress, Harker said — a sharp departure from the normal volume of calls during Fourth of July celebrations.

“We’re used to summer storms around here, but of this magnitude — I don’t think anybody was expecting it,” he told The Baltimore Sun. “With a couple hundred boats that were meandering around the waterways, a lot of folks got caught off guard and weren’t expecting this.”

Slow-moving storms swept across much of Maryland on July 4, knocking out power for more than 19,000 people in Baltimore County.

The call for help near Hart Miller Island, which came in shortly before 11:30 p.m. Saturday, stood out to Harker. He believes the vessel, which was carrying six people, capsized at the start of the storm, but the flood of requests over VHF marine radios may have drowned out its distress call.

Four of the people swam to the east side of Hart Miller Island, climbing rocks to reach a concrete structure used to deliver dredged material, Harker said. Two remained in the water by the time his crew got the call. Originally heading to the southern side of the island, Harker rerouted around the north side.

“You got to understand that it’s completely dark,” he said. “We’re navigating by radar, and we’re navigating by chart plotter because you can’t see anything.”

Motoring along the north side of the island, Harker spotted something unusual amid a sea of crab pots and markers: a light.

“We got a little closer to it, and all of a sudden, one of my crew members, a rescue swimmer, says, ‘Hey, there’s people in the water,'” he recalled. “Our pathway took us to within 150 feet of where they were … there’s a lot of luck involved with victim survival, and we were able to come across them very fast.”

Though the two had some flotation devices — one person pulled from the water had a life jacket, and both were aided by a floating toy — what made the difference was one person using a flashlight on an Apple Watch to signal for help, Harker said.

“It was quite remarkable,” he said. “It was a busy night; we had a whole bunch of calls before that.”

Harker said his crew handled two boats that had crashed onto the rocks. One had seven people aboard; the other had four. In all, he helped rescue 17 people on Saturday. Another seven people were rescued from a vessel on Sunday.

Boaters should always have a working cellphone and a VHF radio to communicate distress calls, Harker said. But checking forecasts is critical, too.

“Keeping close eye to the weather — weather is a major factor in the amount and severity of the rescues that we respond to,” he said.

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