My point is not to belittle or demean the efforts or add to the already over taxed men and women of the USCG, but being an east coast diver I have seen USCG as well as local police boats respond to diver distress calls and response has always been quick. The speed that they are able to be on scene is astonishing. Even in the winter, the USCG has pulled me out of the water when a sailboat I was on was destroyed, minutes after entering Long Island Sound I was on a fast response boat. The time that it took for two kayakers and several divers to return the diver to shore was excessive. I am a volunteer firefighter / EMT and every second wasted pulls from potential survivability. If the USCG station is manned or if there is a harbor master/harbor police boat available, why would they not dispatched as well. The lake that I live on has no fewer than 7 fire rescue boats and 5 Lake authority/police boats as well as one State Police boat all of which are available for response to the lake 24/7 during the non frozen time of year. Average response time for a call on the lake is 4-12 minutes, we maintain boat standby crews during high use days (holidays and weekends). We also have volunteers on the lake that can respond with personal vessels, this further reduces our response times. I personally have a jump kit, blue light (for emergency response) and fire department radio on my boat.
So Adrian, to answer your LUDRICOUS comment, back east we make it work, it isn't ludicrous and we have a very high survival rate for water related incidents on the lake because we utilize all available resources. Each town/city on Long Island Sound and the Hudson River has at least one police boat and generally several JetSkis, (most purchased with Federal Grant money made available specifically for the purchase of boats) many have more, NYSP, NYPD and CSP also maintain police boats there are also fire boats that are maintained and manned by many coastal towns. This is all in addition to USCG patrol and service vessels.
Additionally Adrian, calling me out for using the generic reference of GUYS is asinine, I have a seventeen year old daughter (100% female) that refers to her closest girlfriends as "the guys", maybe I'm just not politically correct enough for you, too bad.
While I think your intention is good, I believe you are focused on the wrong thing.
The only scenario I can see where a life guard can likely have a positive impact in the outcome of a dive incident is if a diver surfaces in distress, the life guard sees right away, the coast guard is called right away, a boat is dispatched. All the while, the diver remains on the surface.
Every other, more likely scenario, by the time the life guard/coast guard intervene, the situation will already be incredibly grim. Sadly, in years I have been casually following the accidents and incidents forum, it is the grim scenarios that are more common.
These grim cases include:
- The diver panics, bolts to the surface, suffers from an AGE, passes out at the surface (and either remains at the surface or re-submerges after passing out)
- The diver runs out of gas, manages to surface (maybe did a CESA), is unable to remain in the surface, re-submerges and drowns
- The diver is found unconscious underwater by other divers during a dive (without ever being noticed as surfacing prior to losing consciousness)
- A diver is missing (is unconscious and is not seen by his buddy or any other diver in the vicinity)
In these cases, by the time someone is able to notify the coast guard, a boat dispatched and the boat to arrive on scene and effect a rescue, the diver is already unconscious having suffered from something like an AGE or has already drowned. While I agree that even in these scenarios, it is preferable to have help arrive in as soon as possible, I doubt it would make a difference.
From my casual observation, recreational diving incidents usually fall into one of two categories - pre-existing health issues and diver error. Though I don't know anything about this specific incident, I would be very surprised if the incident fell outside of these two categories. In my view, it is better for us as divers to focus on these two categories than to pine for life guard/coast guard or other emergency response resources at every site that divers frequent. In the first place, managing health issues and becoming better divers are two very good ways to proactively avoid finding ourselves in grim situations. In the second place, having emergency resources at common dive sites is not only prohibitively expensive, they are also very unlikely to positively affect the outcome of the common dive incident scenarios.
