How to become "Volunteer" Search and Rescue Diver?

[UbiDubi]

Here is the website for the DART team in your area. They have a page about how to join and what's expected.

http://dartsac.org

 

[bolantej]

Thanks for the website, UbiDubi. Seems like a good place to start.

 

[Tatakai]

I am planning on doing the same thing here as my dive buddy's mom is the asst dir fro EMS and homeland security here. For me to join they require me to have my Rescue diver certification before they will consider me. Then I will be only used as a backup if one of the other divers can't be there or is already being used elsewhere. They dead and decomposed bodies doesn't bother me have seen more than I care to remember. It is something that very few can do and few that will stay with it for very long as I have been told. I wish you all the luck and wish you the best in your endeavor to become a volunteer diver.

Tennessee Volunteers best college football team in the south.

Tatakai

 

[Cyclops_Diver]

Such a wealth of information on this board!

I'm considering this line of volunteer work as well, and as soon as I have a question here you all are with answers!

Oh...And GO VOLS!

 

[Gary D.]

They dead and decomposed bodies doesn't bother me have seen more than I care to remember. It is something that very few can do and few that will stay with it for very long as I have been told.

Tatakai

Dealing with dead and decomposing bodies is very much different on land than it is underwater.

On land they just remain where they are until you move them. There are times under water when the body will just up and turn or move around and appear to take a look at you. That can make Halloween night look like Christmas and mess up a perfectly clean dry suit.

I’ve had bodies where there was marine life moving around under the skin. Those can look like they are flexing facial muscles and smiling or blinking their eyes at you.

It is very different underwater and at times you CAN smell or taste them before you see or feel them.

Burnout is very high in PSD. We have roughly 20 Deputies still employed with the department that were on the team at one time. Not a one of them has continued diving after they quit. They left the team and left diving as a distant memory. In my 31+ years on this team we have gone through somewhere between 50 and 75 members. I only know of one that still dives once and a while. The rest don’t. It isn’t an easy job at all and it takes it toll.

Be careful on what and how much Recreational Dive training you get as it is very contradictory to PSD.

Gary D.

 

[DeputyDan]

A friend of mine was a big tough "rescue" diver till the skull had little pink braces.

He is a more humble person today!

 

[covediver]

I see from your profile that you are in sacramento. In California, search and rescue is the purview of the County Sheriff, so that would be a good place to start rather than a municipal police or fire department. Many counties in California use volunteer or reserve officers for this function. When I lived in Socal a few years ago, Ventura County was probably the best example. They had a very active team of volunteers and offered very professional training.

 

[ScubaSarus]

I remember a story about a famous naval diver named Lee here in CT. A very brave diver he was. He had the chore of recovering the bodies of a car-train crash that knocked the car into Silver Lake in Meriden/Berlin, CT. I understand it was too much for him to do.

His old time dive partner for that rescue approached us at Stonington Point and told us the story. I read about Lee prior to this conversation quite a bit in the New London Day. So I asked his former buddy a lot of questions about Lee.

When you go in to recover a body you have to find it all; you can't leave a hand or some other part left behind for the fish or a unsuspecting fisherman or snorkeler to find at a later date. The next of kin would also be devastated.

Its a grizzly job for the few that can stomach it. Take a part time job with the medical examiner as an assistant; its in the ballpark.