What is your reaction time?

[Jorbar1551]

During our teem meeting yesterday, our chief told me that the team had been requested for a underwater swift water rescue in an area that was just outside our borders, but we would do it if needed. he was then asked what the soonest he could get a team to react and he said 60-90 minutes. yes it would take us awhile to get out to the spot, but that time is still a long time for any rescue.

 

[Yotsie]

Our team does not conduct rescues for that very reason. All of our members are assigned to various functions in the Sheriff's Department and we come together when activated for recoveries only. Our Water Enforcement Team (WET), is responsible for all enforcement on our lakes and waterways. They are trained, as we are, in swiftwater rescue, but are still a minimum of 30 mins out unless the rescue is at the lake they are assigned. Our county relies on FDs to provide the rescue. When we initially became swiftwater rescue certified as a Sheriff's team, that raised hell will the FDs. We decided to leave the rescues to the FDs, who have a better response time.

Our team does stay swiftwater certified for big operations like we had back in 1997 when 1/3 of our county was under water.

 

[Gary D.]

That’s a tough one to answer. Several of our members, including myself live on the west side of this 1400 sq. mi. county. Fortunately most of our calls are from the middle to the west making our response times from home around 5 to 10 minutes.

Normally we can even reach the furthest remote areas of the county in 30 to 60 minutes. This is where some out of the area Fire Departments say we should turn our operations over to fire units as there are stations that are much closer. But due to the remoteness and poor road conditions we beat them to the scenes about 99% of the time.

Other times we may have a 30 to 45 minute boat ride to get on scene.

Of course this depends on weather conditions. Heavy rain or snows will slow us down a bit and at times even stop us, which is quite rare. But once on scene we can normally be in the water in around 3 minutes. Double that if we are going under the ice due to the extra safety precautions we take.

In Idaho the Sheriff is responsible for all Search and Rescue operations. They don’t do all of them but are responsible for them by law.

Gary

 

[Jorbar1551]

are you guys swift water certafied? what about underwater swift water certafied?