ERDI vs LGS

[cliffhanger]

Before this has any chance to turn into a he said she said thread, which is entirely against what I want, I was wondering on pros and cons of both of these systems. I am wanting to move the "public safety divers" in our rescue group to a properly trained group. I am debating between ERDI and LGS. We will be working on a very limited budget, as is everyone today, and I do not want to waste money and time with training from the wrong groups. If they both do stellar training, that is great too. Thanks in advance for your help. Once again, I am just looking for knowledge from past experience and classes, not finger pointing.

 

[dittrimd]

I know this topic has been covered in this forum before but I will weigh in. Have no knowledge of ERDI but I have been involved with LGS and Dive Rescue International (DRI). In both cases you have companies committed to the education and improved safety of PSD. Both programs have thier similarities and differences. They both have some great instructors with years of experience and knowlege. Some of the differences I noticed were that LGS has a fairly rigid curiculum that has specific requirement and goes into great detail. This can be illustrated by there extensive signals. DRI has a very detailed curriculum but it is in my opinion more adaptable to various teams operations. One of the things I liked about DRI was there signals were only 4. In both classes there were fire/ems and law enforcement PSD's. During and after the class discussion most students felt that they would take a lot of information back to their teams.

For my team and the type of diving we do I felt DRI was better suited for preparing us for rescue where as my LEO counter parts felt that LGS detail made finding smaller evidence items.

My advice to you and your team is to first gain an understanding of the specific capabilities you currently have or want your team to have, i.e. rescue, recovery, evidence recover, and things beyond dive like swift water, flood water, or ice rescue. Then contact other area teams that do similar types of operations and find out what training they use. This is especially helpful if you ever plan to dive together or for gear selection. We had a neighboring team ask us about our full face masks and comms. After showing them our gear and letting them try it out they went out and purchased the same equipment so now we are cross compatible. Then research the PSD training organization and find out which can most closely meet your previously identified capabilities.

This is a pretty big decision for your team becuase it will affect many aspects of your team and its future. There is no such thing as doing too much research.

Best of luck and hope this helps,

Mark D.

 

[Gary D.]

DRI is our choice but I'm in no way against the others.

 

[CCTX50]

My team has attended two Dive Rescue International courses and felt that they met our needs. Very professional in the delivery of the training. Our instructor was very knowledgable in PSD and was able to answer all questions presented to him. Not having ever attended LGS or ERDI training I have no comparison. With that said, I highly recommend DRI as a PSD trainer.

Blades is on Scubaboard frequently and is very helpful.

 

[Upstate Scuba OWI]

Our team use to send people to both but now we are DRI full time with training.