Buffalo PD URT Incident

[Paul R]

Multiple teams/agencies on scene. Diver not found yet. Been a little over four hours since he went missing.

Hope fading as search continues for missing Buffalo police diver

 

[Dizzi Lizzi]

I do hope he is safe somewhere. God bless all those PSD!!

Can you explain to me what the tender cable is?

 

[horsediver1]

Dizzi- The tender line is usually a rope that is tied to the diver back to the tender on shore/or boat. If you look at the diver photo you will see he has a harness underneath the B/C with multiple D rings. It appears that this team uses through water comms, some use hard wire which is also attached to the tether rope.

 

[tbzep]

The tender line allows us to do thorough searches in zero visibility and communicate with the surface. Think of mowing a lawn going back and forth, moving over just enough to cover new ground but overlap a bit to make sure the area is covered. We can communicate via tugs on the line, and in our case, the tender line is also our comm line for audio.

 

[Paul R]

Got home a little while ago from Buffalo. The only teams diving were Buffalo and us. We were told the river speed was about 10-12 knots. And it sure felt like it. No luck.
Plan is to be on scene at 8AM tomorrow. Hopefully the predicted thunderstorms don't show up until late afternoon.

 

[Resqdivemedic]

Plan is to be on scene at 8AM tomorrow.

Dive safe, please. Hopefully there is closure to this tragedy soon.

 

[Paul R]

Had to call it because of the weather.
Lots of shoreline & river wall covered by us and them today. Erie County Sheriff's ran sonar and dove an area a little further downriver. NYPD continued to use their hand held sonar and others continued to use their side scan. Not sure what dynamic forces were going on, but one agency's side scan cable/tow line snapped. Bye bye fish...
Planning on lots of drift dives tomorrow.

 

[horsediver1]

Thanks for the updates be safe!

 

[tbzep]

My PS diving has always been in still water lakes and ponds until this summer. We were asked by a neighboring county to aid in searching for a drowning victim in the river. I swam against stiff current (for me anyway) and bottomed out at 60 ft in the center of the channel where I searched. Sometime after you have rested from your deployment, I'd love to hear about methods/techniques you and the other divers used in heavy current. Hopefully he will be found soon. Be safe.

 

[Resqdivemedic]

Keep us updated and stay safe.