What's up with poorly equiped Public Safety divers?

[indypddiver]

Hi there,

As a public safety diver for a relatively large police department in the midwest, I'd like to say that the attitudes or skills of the PSDs seen in Texas are not indicative of the teams with which I'm familiar. As most probably know, there are many factors that influence the skill or perceived skill of PSDs (budget, experience, length of time that the team has been active, and most importantly: number of dives/runs the team takes in a given year). I can only speak from my personal experience, but the first post on this topic stated that the PSDs in Texas had on average less than 30 dives per man. That is hard to believe if true! A candidate for our team must already be at a minimum an open water certified diver, with experience, to join the team. Also, the equipment that the PSDs in Texas were using is incredibly out-dated. We may not have the newest, top of the line gear, but its certainly more than adequate.

The things seen at the training dive in Texas lead me to believe that the team was probably made of volunteers, or was a very new team, and that they did not handle many scuba calls as a whole. No knock against volunteers, they are great people. Its just that volunteers are just that and do not have the advantage of time to train, as a team, like guys who are paid to do so. Also, if they had not been in the water "since becoming rescue divers", that should set off a huge red flag! We train atleast one day per month on top of the 130 or so scuba calls we take each year on average. So, we are in the water quite a bit, several times a month. I'm not sure that I'd want that particular team attempting a rescue on me.

Lastly, I have done my fair share of diving. The guys I dive with are excellent divers. Some of the very best I've ever seen. More importantly, they love to do it. You would never hear us complaining about having to train or dive. As a whole, we are a very professional, very experienced (over 200 years of diving on the team), very safety conscious group of PSDs. I hope that this tidbit of info about another PSD team has answered your question. No, what you saw in Texas is NOT the norm.

Thanks,

indypddiver

 

[GTADiver]

Butch 103 mentioned:

......Has OPP (Ontario Provincial Police) dive teams. They are responsible (from my limited knowledge) for diving for criminal evidence and body recovery. Problem is, too few teams and long distances to go. I believe they are well trained and use up too date <?> equipment...

Thanks to Harris cuts the team has been hurt drastically. They are all out of Gravenhurst. I guess its good for their overtime. They are restricted to a max depth of a 100 feet. Having spoken to other police dept's divers they just laugh and say....OPP the other peoples police. They get their gear from the recoveries.

 

[MikeFerrara]

indypddiver,

Hey I thought you were gone! Check out the Montecello team and let us know what you think.

BTW, I heard from a couple of your guys. I sent them some info they asked for but never heard back. I don't remember their names or for that matter where I wrote them down. It seems the fd instructor had a pretty sweet deal.

 

[MNScuba]

Couldn't have said it better myself...

Arduous once bubbled...
Unfortunately public safety divers are under the thumb of budget constraints and the control of their municipality. I do search & rescue work for a police agency. Unfortunately, the agency picks, purchases and maintains the equipment. Training is also under the thumb of the budget as training is not free. You can’t always place the blame on the divers for the equipment or their method of training. Most times this is governed by the agency and out of the divers control. You may ask then why do the divers dive, when they may know better ? For the most part they do it because they care. They want to recover that lost person so that the family can have closure, or get that piece of evidence that puts the bad guy away. As for how they dive. Public safety diving is not recreational diving. Public safety divers are trained to go into waters that recreational divers are trained to avoid. Stormy seas zero visibility..ect. When searching a small area where the target is believed to be,it is not uncommon to send only one diver down, with another diver in the ready. Again may or may not be the divers choice. Who actually dives and who stays on the surface is also not the individual divers call. This decision is made for him or her by those in charge and those in charge may or may not even be divers. That’s just the way it is. So don’t judge the way you dive with the way public safety divers dive. It’s not even close to being the same thing.

……………Arduous

 

[John C. Ratliff]

Having now read most (and skimmed the rest) of these posts, I think that the most troubling aspect is that this group of PSD is using the diver rescue course as a course for recovery. Unless things have changed dramatically in the last 15 years (which very well may be possible) my recallection is that this course was to train divers in techniques to find and rescue his or her own buddy. It really did not aim toward the public safety diver, and the specialized needs they have and hazards they face.

I also have a few comments on posts from above. The main one I disagree with to some extent (depending upon the location) is that PSD are in a recovery mode only. Having trained diver rescue and recovery some years ago, and being up on emergency medicine, I must remind people that there is something called "cold water near drowning." Under this scenario, it is possible to resescitate and have either partial of full recovery of the victim for up to an hour after immersion, depending upon the coldness of the water (the colder the better) and the age of the individual (children and babies seem to do better, and adults worse, probably due to the rapidity of the cooling of the body once immersed). The important point is that there have now been documented full recoveries (I think it is plural now) of persons immersed for up to an hour under water! Therefore, if it is under an hour since the person went under, the SAR force cannot automatically assume its a body recovery when it happens in cold water (probably about 70 degrees is a cutoff, and remember that there are thermoclines, so surface water temps don't necessarily predict survivability).

I have in my library two booklets, published by the Illinois Scuba rescue & Recovery Instructors Unit for The Civil Defense by Jim Darby and George Beardsley in 1972 titled Advanced Diving Techniques for Scuba Rescue and Recovery and Scuba Rescue and Recovery Log Book. Hopefully, these have been updated since, and there may be other sources. The other book in my library (which shows when I was last really active in the area) is Wilderness Search and Rescue by Tim J. Setnicka, Appalachian Mountain Club, Boston, 1980. On page 441 they have a whole chapter on "Whitewater SAR." If others on this forum have other references, please feel free to share them, especially if they are more up-to-date than mine.

I have done a lot of swift water swimming, and feel that perhaps the rescue and recovery divers are too gear-heavy for swift water. Much work can be done without scuba, for instance, depending upon the river depth and location. Waiting for a massive recovery effort can erode the time element for cold water near drowning situations, and truely turn a possible rescue into a body recovery. I'll go into more detail later, but the more equipment one has on in current, the less effective he or she will be in moving in the water. This probably goes against the grain of many SAR persons, but it is based upon my fin swimming work in rivers, my own rescue work (9+ years, USAF PJ), and a lifetime of experience.

SeaRat