ANDOVER — Two people who drove past “Road Closed” flood barricades Sunday evening on Covered Bridge Road got stuck and had to be rescued, Andover firefighters said.

Their names were not released.

At 8:45 p.m., a man and a woman in separate vehicles drove a pickup truck and a Jeep Cherokee onto the road, which was overrun by the rain-swollen Ellis River, Chief Rob Dixon and Capt. Sylvanus “Butch” Glover said.

“I don’t know exactly what happened, but we had a couple vehicles that ignored the barricade and went into high water and got stuck in fast water and they needed to be rescued,” Dixon said.

The Jeep and truck are 100 yards in from the Lovejoy Covered Bridge on the road, which connects Route 5 in South Andover with the East Andover and Rumford Center roads, he said.

“There is at least 200 yards of road flooded from the Covered Bridge to the high side on the East Andover side and they were stuck in the middle of it, so we had to extricate them with a swift-water rescue,” Dixon said.

At 9:07 p.m., they requested swift-water rescue assistance from Rumford firefighters.

Glover, one of the rescuers, said two firefighters crossed the water to where the trapped duo waited.

He said the pair were trying to move their vehicles to a high spot. The Jeep had stalled out in water that was halfway up the doors, he said.

“What we ended up doing was getting into a triangle-shaped position and all four of us came back across, side by side through 300 feet of waist-deep water,” Glover said.

At 11 p.m., Andover firefighters were sent back to the road to rescue more people after it was confirmed that another vehicle could be seen in the water with its headlights on.

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