How to start a county team?

[kansasdog]

hello

I am looking for any information that is availible on how to start a county based dive/sar team. We have several divers in the area and half are members of rural fire or city fire depts. In the last two years our rural fire dept has spent almost as many hours on water recovery work as fighting fires. What i am wanting to do is try to get affiliated with one of the county agencies to possibly get grant money for training.
We have the option of Sheriff dept, or rural fire I don't know which would be better to be affiliated with.

With the economic conditions i know that money for equipment and training will be scarce but we have most of the basic equip. and other teams with in 100 miles for mutual aid. But I feel that even baby steps are still steps forward to the benefit of our county.

thanks
J.T. John

 

[Wildbill]

Hey JT, first off welcome to ScubaBoard. You will see that you can get just about any question answered here so you have come to the right place. Now on with your question. We need a little more information on the area that you live in (I see your from Kansas) and the types of PSD available to you now. What I mean is that you mention your law enforcement and FD, do either currently have a team? If so, then they would be the primary team and putting together a private PSD team would not be effective. If they do have a partial or part time team then depending on the Sheriff or Chief you and others could possibly be add-ons or volunteers to help out and with budgets the way they currently are I'm sure they would be more open to this idea.

I'm currently the Assistant Team Leader for the Sheriff's Office that I'm employed by and it's a small but effective team. I would like to make the team larger but there is no budget money. I'm thinking of suggesting this very scenario to the Sheriff in order to get some more help.

Good Luck,

 

[BladesRobinson]

You might want to contact your local Emergency Management coordinator. That may be the sheriff, the fire chief at the county seat, or an independent third party. The person who runs the Emergency Management for the county will likely be in the best position to get funding for your team and can assist in coordinating the response between the various fire department divers and (possibly) the law enforcement divers in your region.

Best of luck with your efforts!

If you need assistance, consider joining the International Association of Dive Rescue Specialists (www.IADRS.org). You can also download a sample SOP/SOG from the IADRS website that will serve as a good guide for your team.

Regards,

Blades Robinson
Director, Dive Rescue International
Executive Director, International Association of Dive Rescue Specialists

 

[shaggy1]

I am the Asst. Dive Team leader for a multi agency Search and Recovery Team that we recently formed. I will be glad to give you some advise on what worked for us and what didnt work. After forming the team,... we then went to many of the Law Enforcement agencies and Fire Departments in our area and worked out interagency agreements with many of them. Dive Rescue International has been one of the single greatest sources of help. We attended one of their Dive Rescue 1 classes and suddenly the process was much easier. I can not say enough good things about Dive Rescue International. While the formation of our team hasnt been easy, DRI sure made the process alot less stressful.

Johnny Millwood
Asst. Team Leader
Northeast Texas Search and Recovery Team
email: jmbear328@yahoo.com