On Tuesday, fishermen on Lake Cunningham in Omaha, Nebraska, saw something on their sonar that was not a fish. It was a car.
They reported it. A water rescue team from the Omaha Fire Department went out, confirmed the vehicle was there, and confirmed nobody was inside. Then it waited.
"Because it was getting close to dark, we decided to wait to do the dive operation and recover the car until today," Battalion Chief Coby Werner told WOWT on Wednesday.
Wednesday morning, the team pulled the SUV out of the lake.
Ten Feet Down
The vehicle was sitting in about 10 feet of water. Werner called the water "a little bit cold." No injuries were reported during the recovery.
No one has been reported missing, Werner said, so Omaha Police will investigate how the vehicle got into the lake.
Ten feet is not deep. This one was found because someone happened to be looking at a sonar screen at the right moment.
Five to Ten a Year
The line from the story worth holding onto is Werner's.
"It happens more than you think," he said. He put the number at probably 5 to 10 a year at the various lakes around the Omaha area.
He described the range. Some are cars that have been on the bottom for 40 years until the water level changes or someone finds them. Others are stolen vehicles that somebody took for a joyride and dumped in the lake.
That is one metro area. Every region with lakes and reservoirs has its own version of that number.
What a Car Brings Into the Water
A vehicle that goes into a lake does not go in empty. It carries a fuel tank, engine oil, ethylene glycol and a lead acid battery. Under the Clean Water Act, a discharge that leaves a visible sheen on the water is reportable. At its research site near Bemidji, Minnesota, the U.S. Geological Survey has tracked petroleum contamination persisting in groundwater for decades.
The longer a vehicle sits, the longer those fluids and parts have to work their way out of it.
Utah's lakes and reservoirs hold their share. Our Utah Waterways Submerged Debris Atlas documents an estimated 499 submerged items across 20 Utah lakes, including 56 vehicles and 103 vessels that are individually confirmed.
What We Do Now, and What We Are Building
Fathom Restoration is a disabled-veteran-led Utah 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Today our volunteer divers carry trash out of Utah's lakes and reservoirs by hand. Since September we have logged volunteer dive cleanups at Deer Creek, Sand Hollow and Strawberry, about 93 pounds of trash by our estimate.
Vehicles take far more than hands. We are working to start recovering submerged vehicles, and we are doing it in order: insurance, permits and commercial dive certification first.
The Ones Nobody Has Found Yet
In Omaha, fishermen paid attention to what was on their screen, and a dive team did the rest. Werner's number says that is not a rare event. It is a regular one.
Somewhere under the surface of Utah's lakes are the ones nobody has spotted yet. We intend to be ready for them.
Fathom Restoration is a disabled-veteran-led Utah 501(c)(3) nonprofit running volunteer dive cleanups on Utah's lakes and waterways and building toward the recovery of submerged vehicles and vessels. Donate or volunteer at fathomrestoration.org.
Source: https://www.wowt.com/2026/11/11/rescue-personnel-pull-suv-omaha-lake/
