Yotsie
Contributor
Our team was scheduled for a remote insertion operation yesterday (May 17). We assemble at the hanger and are informed we have a call out. CHP located a vehicle submerged near a fishing access facility. We load up our van and head out.
We go onscene and can barely make out the glimmer of a chrome bumper. This is located on the Tuolumne River near LaGrange, CA. River is flowing heavy due to snow run off. The vehicle is in a protected area by the boat ramp, so the current wasn't much of a problem. We still stationed two people downstream with throw bags, just in case.
Our brand new guy gets the shoulder tap after one of our more experienced divers checks out the conditions. New guy goes in, locates the Mitsubishi Montero (stolen out of Sacramento, CA) and proceeds to rig up the chain for recovery, under the watchfull eye of our senior diver.
Vis is fairly decent due to the water flow. Tow truck is a good 45 mins. out, so after completing our recovery investigation, I break out my trusty ole 35mm dive camera. Most of the team goes in and I get a chance to photograph them around the vehicle in 14 ffw.
Tow truck shows up and takes the Montero out right up the boat ramp without incident. Afterwards, new guy goes back in and runs search patterns over the area the vehicle was pulled from. This served two purposes, insure we didn't miss anything and get him experienced in his patterns.
Our new team leader (the one I've written bout in past posts) is very happy with the operation and the fact that we picked right up with doing some training, even though our training day got cancelled by this call.
Our helo op got pushed back to August now due to scheduling conflicts with Flight Operations. :sad_2:
One other good thing happened, our most senior diver decided to stay onboard in a shore support role until his retirement from the dept. in a year.
:yelclap:
Paul
We go onscene and can barely make out the glimmer of a chrome bumper. This is located on the Tuolumne River near LaGrange, CA. River is flowing heavy due to snow run off. The vehicle is in a protected area by the boat ramp, so the current wasn't much of a problem. We still stationed two people downstream with throw bags, just in case.
Our brand new guy gets the shoulder tap after one of our more experienced divers checks out the conditions. New guy goes in, locates the Mitsubishi Montero (stolen out of Sacramento, CA) and proceeds to rig up the chain for recovery, under the watchfull eye of our senior diver.
Vis is fairly decent due to the water flow. Tow truck is a good 45 mins. out, so after completing our recovery investigation, I break out my trusty ole 35mm dive camera. Most of the team goes in and I get a chance to photograph them around the vehicle in 14 ffw.
Tow truck shows up and takes the Montero out right up the boat ramp without incident. Afterwards, new guy goes back in and runs search patterns over the area the vehicle was pulled from. This served two purposes, insure we didn't miss anything and get him experienced in his patterns.
Our new team leader (the one I've written bout in past posts) is very happy with the operation and the fact that we picked right up with doing some training, even though our training day got cancelled by this call.
Our helo op got pushed back to August now due to scheduling conflicts with Flight Operations. :sad_2:
One other good thing happened, our most senior diver decided to stay onboard in a shore support role until his retirement from the dept. in a year.
:yelclap: Paul
