Indianapolis Vehicle Recovery

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tbzep

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Location
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Indianapolis Fire Dept recovered a vehicle from a frozen lake yesterday (Jan 3). The driver was rescued New Years' Eve by IFD divers and is still alive, AFIK. She was the only occupant. With the infamous fatalities of IFD divers a few years ago, what was the mindset in deciding to recover the vehicle from the frozen lake instead of waiting until the spring thaw? Was the vehicle needed for investigation? Was it causing extreme irreversible environmental damage? With all the risk vs. benefit* we are bombarded with in the FD these days, why did they make a higher risk recovery through the ice vs. waiting for a much lower risk recovery after the thaw? I'm not knocking their decision, I just want to know the rationale for it.

*As an example, there is an ongoing "battle" over searching vacant buildings that are burning. One side says we are insane to risk interior search and suppression operations on a vacant building. The other side says there is no such thing as "vacant" until a search is performed and proven to be vacant. It's our job. It's what we do. (think homeless squatters or kids playing)
 
I was not on scene to make the call but, maybe they had really good conditions and they logged it as a training dive. That way when the bus full on nuns falls into the ice.... They will be experienced in that type of dive.
 
I would assume that they were looking into any evidence of a crime (like, maybe drunk driving).

I'll show my ignorance here. Never having done an under ice recovery (ty, Florida), why wait until a thaw to recover the vehicle? I understand the cold would have an effect on the gear, but presumably and Indianapolis based recovery team would have cold water gear. At the entry point, I would imagine that the ice could be broken back far enough to not be an issue. Lastly, any and all recovery personnel should be tethered.

I guess I need an explanation as to why this was a "much higher" risk? Also, having the fortune to have never lost a teammate, I need to ask what fatalities a few years ago have to do with the teams performance now? Although they may be infamous, I'm not sure what fatalities you're referring, or the contributing factors. What was the outcome of the investigation into the deaths? Were the issues addressed? Is the team competent? IF so, barring additional information, I would assume this to be an "ordinary" recovery.

Edit:

Found some references to a death in 2002. Are these the ones you're talking about? 16 years ago? I imagine that they have evolved since then.
http://psdiver.com/images/06-14-02_Indianapolis_IN_PSD_TRAINING_LAKE-_UPDATED_8-24-08_-_secure.pdf
 
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August 13, 2000 and June 14, 2002. Their dive team SOPs were restructured after the fatalities, so those events would have to do with their current operations. They train through DRI, which is how I was made aware of their previous fatalities and subsequent changes in philosophy. Divers attempted to recover the car the same night and had to abort due to frozen regulators. Air temps were around 0 deg F, not sure of the water temp. They recovered the vehicle 3 days later. It wasn't needed for evidence and the temperatures and conditions were somewhat better, but still pretty bad. My question had to do with that aspect and I was hoping to get some direct knowledge from IFD or support personnel at the time of the post. I'm already pretty good at speculation, so I was hoping for facts, philosophies, etc. from them. The post is about 5 months old so it's water (and ice) under the bridge now.

Firefighters face challenges in frigid temps
 
Cool. Thx for the explanation.
 
What were the causes of the IFD fatalities?
 

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