Spectators learn how to escape a sinking car at Lake Ralphine in Santa Rosa

The red Ford Focus rolled into Lake Ralphine Monday with a splash, then began quietly sinking below the surface with two men inside and a crowd of people standing on shore looking on.

With the water rising to the windows, trained divers Andy Brennan and Bill Bullard took off their seat belts. Brennan rolled down the driver's side window and pulled himself headfirst into the cool water. Bullard reached into the back seat and unbuckled two child-sized mannequins in car seats and handed them out the window to Brennan, who was treading water.

The people on the banks of the lake cheered and applauded.

“I've played it over and over in my head,” said Jennifer Ravani, 31, of Rohnert Park, who held her 2-year-old daughter and watched the demonstration from shore. “It's why we're here.”

Four Sonoma County children were killed in submerged vehicles in August during separate crashes into waterways that occurred just eight days apart. The drivers, the children's mothers, survived the watery crashes.

The tragedies stoked fears and debates about how best to escape a submerged car.

Santa Rosa Santa Rosa Assistant Fire Marshal Paul Lowenthal said there's a method to increasing the likelihood of getting out alive. They received enough calls after the crashes, Aug. 22 and 31, that they decided they needed to train Sonoma County first responders and teach the public what to do.

“Get your seatbelt off, get that window down and extricate yourself then focus on any other passengers with you,” Lowenthal said.

Brennan, a Santa Rosa schoolteacher, and Bullard, chief of the Graton Fire Protection District chief, are members of the nine-person Sonoma County sheriff's volunteer dive team. Their members, all trained in rescue, took turns being trapped in the Ford Focus - a junker donated by Occidental Tow with its fuel, fluids and battery removed - and getting all occupants out.

Steve Young, owner of Art's Towing, towed the vehicle out of the water so the divers could push it back in and show various techniques, including how to rescue dolls buckled into children's car seats in the back.

Keith Flood, a Santa Rosa fire battalion chief and a volunteer with the sheriff's dive team, was in the driver's seat for several of the exercises. He said that even with his skills and training, his heart was pounding each time.

“You just can't imagine what it's like being faced with something like that,” Flood said. “The most important thing is to stay calm and give your mind a second to think: seatbelt, window, get out.”

Petaluma Fire Battalion Chief Jeff Holden demonstrated how to break the heat-tempered glass. The glass is weakest at its corners. With just several hard taps, he shattered each window using various small tools and even the metal prong of a headrest. Many hardware stores sell small emergency hammers to use on car windows that also have a cutter for seatbelts.

Dozens of people, mostly families with children, gathered around the banks to watch. Some were parkgoers drawn to the scene by the row of firetrucks and law enforcement patrol cars. Many said they heard about the event on social media.

It seemed nearly every person present was thinking about the deaths of Jenner sisters Kaitlyn Markus, 6, and Hailey Markus, 4, and Rohnert Park sisters Sayra Gonzalez, 7, and Delilah Gonzalez, 9. They died in eerily similar crashes, Aug. 22 and 31, in which their mothers lost control of the vehicles, crashing into bodies of water.

Cotati mother Angela Zwinge, 45, brought one of her daughters to Lake Ralphine to watch the demonstration. She sat on a rock and recorded the scene with her phone as the car splashed into the water, one arm wrapped around her girl.

“When I heard about those girls from Jenner, the first thing that went through my mind was: I have five kids. how am I going to save these kids?” Zwinge said.

You can reach Staff Writer Julie Johnson at 521-5220 or julie.johnson@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @jjpressdem.