Firefighters at Snohomish County Fire District 1’s Martha Lake Fire Station 21 responded to a rescue call this morning that was anything but routine: freeing 11 ducklings trapped in a storm drain.

The firefighters responded to 170^th Place SE and 2^nd Avenue SE just west of Mill Creek after Amy Shieff called Fire District 1 Headquarters asking for help. She had been walking in the neighborhood when she noticed a duck circling around the grate on a storm drain in an unusual way. Shieff said she stopped to investigate and that’s when she heard the ducklings in the drain.

Shieff said she made several phone calls to other agencies before her neighbor, Leilani Miller, suggested she try the fire department.

When firefighters arrived the ducklings had moved away from the drain where Shieff first heard them and were now beyond reach in the drainage pipe between two storm drains. Firefighters put a fire hose in the first drain and used a gentle stream of water to float the ducklings down to the next drain where they worked with neighbors to safely retrieve them as they came through. “Firefighters described it as a water slide for ducks,” said Leslie Hynes, Fire District 1 public information officer.

“The rescue was a group effort. The neighbors played a key role,” she said. “We are glad we could work with them to reunite the ducklings with their mother.”