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[GILLEE]

I am new to the forums here. I am a member of my department's water rescue/dive rescue team. I am just curious as to how many divers are out there. Looking to share info and ideas....

[Daron]

Our county fire dept. doesn't have a dive team yet, though they are trying to develop one. I am also on the sheriff's dept. dive team. Very few rescue though, mostly evidence and body recovery. All of the water here is completely 0 vis, basicly nothing but big mudholes about 30 to 50 foot deep. I would be interested in sharing information with you on the subject though.

[GILLEE]

Daron,

Our county also has a recovery team with the sheriff's department. About four to five years ago we had a couple of rescue calls that turned out to be drownings. We were there within minutes, but basically had to sit there as we had divers on the department but no equipment.

Shortly there after, about 6 of us started to form a dive rescue team. We had a lot of support from the chief and others in the department. The city picked up the training costs. We also got funding from several sources in the area. We've gotten donations of dry suits, three full sets of gear, u.w. communication gear, an ambulance that we converted into a water rescue / mobile air truck, and a lot of other misc. gear. At first we had to supply our own gear, but now we are able to offer other members training with out the financial outlay.

We currently have 6 master scuba divers, and another four in training. We have a major river and more lakes than I'd like to count, so we have vis some of the time, but we deal with a lot of black water.

We find now that we are getting called mutual aid right away to most drownings in our county and surrounding area. Other divers from different departments have started to train with us and there has been talk of a county team set up for rescue.

We know the odds of saving someone are slim in open water, but are hopefull that in the winter under the ice, we will have a lot better odds with the hour window. We have gotten a lot of positive p.r. for our attemps. I think family members and the public are happy to see someone doing something instead of waiting for a recovery team to show.

The reason I was looking for other divers or teams, is that I will be taking over coordination of our team now and I 'd like to be able to get info and bounce ideas off others.

Keep in touch. We'll talk more later...

Gillee

[Daron]

Gillee,
Sounds like you are doing a great job. I've always dreamed of having a setup like that here but can't seem to get enough support because of lack of calls. Yes, I know it only takes one but other do not see it that way. You did bring up an interesting point for us down here anyway. It sound as if the water does get cold enough for a cold water drowning where you are. I ran into some trouble here on the issue. We had an incident where a man drove his car into a pond and sumerged. First people on the scene were law enforcment and they took about 5 minutes to get there and then decided to let the fire dept. know. First fire dept there tried to handle the situation but had no equip or training so they called us. By this time 25 minutes had past and it took me another 10 to get to the scene and then another 5 to 6 minutes to get the info I needed and get suited up. The weather had just turned cold a fewe hours before and before then it had been over 50 degrees for several weeks. I was the only diver that had made it to the scene with gear. I did have another diver but he did not have gear with him. The commander of the scene was convince that this was a cold water drowning and I could tell him no different. I decided to swim out to the car and make a quick dive down about 8 feet with a safety line of course and see if I could get lucky and make a quick find. The car had already been found and was being marked by firemen in a jon boat with pike poles on the hood of the car. I went down and found the driver's door and his window was open so I reached in as far as I could and mad a quick sweep with no luck. I also found the 3 other windows were also open so I made quick sweep of them as well making a point not to make entry since I had no back up. I resurfaced and found I had another diver getting his gear out and decided my best course was to wait for him. The commander went crazy cause he wanted this man out so they could save him. I held my ground. It turned out the man had left the car but couldn't swim and was found about 8 feet to the side of the diver's door. I could not justify risky death of my self or anyone else for that matter or the damage it would have caused to my team to make such an uninformed decession and risk other lives. Water temp turned out to be 58 degrees, not nearly cold enough for MDR to be a factor. Also I talk with the Doctors in charge of our EMS after the fact and found out the county has no procedures in place for a paramedic to handle this. Although, the hospital can handle it the procedures in place probaby would have killed him before he got there and they see no reason to change it as the weather here makes it next to impossibble for MDR to happen. But yet, he won't rely this to the fire or EMS so I have to look forward to being in this problem again. What are your SOP for a cold water drowning?
The policical side of this is a nightmare!! What I can't understand is we would never send a fireman into a fully involved house fire to die, why is this any different?

[GILLEE]

It sounds as if you dealt with the situation as best you could. It is always better to error to the side of caution.

When ever in a rescue situation, our divers will be on a line with a line tender. We have done a lot of training with all members of our department to at least make them familiar with the operations of the divers.

With any sort of hazardous environment such as ice or swift water, we will have a back up diver fully geared and ready for entry before the first diver goes down.

If you are going to respond to calls like this, you really should get some s.o.g.'s established to cover yourself.

As to expanding your water rescue capabilities, keep plugging away at it. I've got to fly right now, but I can talk with you more later on some of the steps we took to get things rolling. The first year or so was tough, but now things are really moving the way we had hoped.

More later...