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easyrider003

Contributor
Messages
162
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0
Location
LaFayette Alabama
# of dives
25 - 49
I am trying to figure out how I am going to put this into wording to where the city counsil will go for it. I am a firefighter/emt and the city I work for will pay to send you to any schools that pertain to your job. I am hoping to get the city to pay for me to take advance open water and hopefully maybe even cave diver. We have one guy that is going to school to be a teacher.... not sure how he sold that for helping his career as a firefihter, but the city counsel fell for it and he is getting a college degree for free. I am trying to figure out how I can word it to present it to the mayor so the city will pay for my SCUBA classes.

1)What is the main difference in advance open water than basic open water.

2) I could probably sale them on some type of underwater navigation with a compass and probably a low visibility class.

3) I would love to do the intro to cavern and cave and also any other cave classes but not sure how to put all this into writting.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Michael
 
I am thinking just tell them that all this will help me in body recovery and different searches. Just thought I would add this on since I forgot in the last post
 
The good news is that if the City Council approve your idea they are likely to insist on full formal training in all specialties you can argue for, maybe with a buddy from the same outfit.

I once certified two young men from the Forest Service who had convinced Fish and Wildlife that their salmon counts would be much more accurate if they could put their heads under water at the several weirs and ladders where they do their counts. The service paid for training, full kit (including drysuits) and specialty training for both of them. [This was under the previous administration.]

The difficult part will be writing the proposal, which is essentially a grant proposal. If you look around online you will be able to find some models on which to base yours. It's important that it look and sound professional, and that you have researched likely costs and time frames. I recommend you have someone else proofread it for grammer and spelling as well as for clarity.

The bad news is that most districs have a search & rescue (or search & recovery) team, often volunteer, who do that work. Your county or parish might be different.

Hope this helps,
Bryan
 
If your on a team that specializes in underwater recovery and searches it shouldn't be hard to push through training but your not going to be the only one needing the training.

its foolish to dive to recover anyone or anything without several other divers present...

however I would suggest you look into some additional training beyond what you are interested in. Dive Rescue International is a certifying agency who specializes in training rescue and recovery specialists. They offer a range of classes dedicated to your needs.

getting cave training paid for if you dont have caves is going to be a hard one and frankly as a tax payer the idea kinda ticks me off. Recovering a body from a cave cant be compared to any other recovery and as such I highly recommend you call the proper authorities for assistance. An organization exists to assist in cave recovery ops.

with that said cave training can help make you a better diver, but that can be said for most training IMO.

I wouldn't encourage you jump from Adv OW to cave either, there are a number of steps in between.

An example of what our dive team requires for training:

Open water
Advanced open water
Public Safety Diver
Ice Diver
Dive Rescue 1
Med Diver
First Responder
Current Diving Ops
Stress inoculation (PSD survival)

The first 2 are paid for by the individual, everything else is covered by the team. Of course if you dive dry then you cover that cost yourself also.

If the team had a bigger budget I would push for more training but even still I wouldn't include cave training. We dont really have caves and most of our team members wouldn't be interested in diving caves let alone recover a body from one.

So what I am saying is, either make sure your team or department has an established list of training and other divers or start a diving specific organization write this idea off. The safety and legal issues that are involved and the insurance issues make this simple question hard to answer.

If your not going to use the training to help the community you shouldn't be trying to get it paid for by the community IMO
 
I have a few other guys in the department that are divers. I am goin to talk with them and see if they may be interested in taking a few classes, or at least trying to. I am definitely going to use it for work, its just a benefit that I could also use it outside of work. The only other team we have outside of firefighting and ems is HazMat, which I am taking the class for HazMat Tech this week. We have no dive team, but we do have several large water systems. I am for any classes they will let me take, not just classes that benefit me outside work such as cave. It would be perfectly fine for them to send me to Public Safety Diver, Dive Rescue and all those other classes.

I am just thinking that the fire department is sending a guy to be a school teacher, how does that help the department, but thats another story. I also had to justify why the city should send me to Medic school. They wanted to know what reason I had for thinking that would benefit the department and the city. Also the police department in our city does not have a dive team but have heard some say they would benefit by having someone who could do some diving for them, such as weapons and drugs recovery. I also have a lady, actually my 6 grade teacher, that could right up the proposal for me. Ill give it a shot and see how it goes.
 
I forgot to mention it earlier but I do know what you mean about being a tax payer and having to pay for things like that. Even though I work for that city, I still have to pay what I am guessing to be called an occupational tax. So although I work for that city, it is clearly stated on check stub that taxes were taken out because I am employed within the city limits. I have friends that work for fire departments in other cities that do not have to pay that same tax. So I figure if I can't stop them from sending someone the get a degree that has nothing to do with the fire department and they are going to pay for him, I might as well try to get as many classes as I can with SCUBA diving, since I am paying taxes back into the city twice per month
 
Advanced Open Water is generally required prior to any Rescue Diving course and certainly to professional diving courses.
Low visibility is in the nature of rescue/recovery environments.
Cave or cavern diving may be directly relevant to your work enviornments. Of course Northwoods Diver's list seems more directly relevant (except the Ice Diving)
 
I suggest you check out the forum dedicated to public safety diving, maybe this thread should be relocated there because its outside the scope of basic diving.

Diving in its nature is inherently dangerous to some degree because humans cant breath underwater, among other reasons. Public safety diving is a whole other issue all together and one shouldn't simply throw on dive gear and attempt to rescue/recover anyone without the proper training. No joke, public safety divers die every year and for a variety of reasons but usually its a lack of training or proper equipment and more often then not they die during training or in rescue mode according to Dive Rescue Internationals stats.

I'm no professional but I want to urge you to leave your dive gear at home and forget about trying to save people until you have ALL the training required and so does at least 3 other members. Is the risk worth the reward??
 


A ScubaBoard Staff Message...

moved to Public Safety Divers, they will be able to better guide your proposal...
 
Advanced Open Water is generally required prior to any Rescue Diving course and certainly to professional diving courses.
Low visibility is in the nature of rescue/recovery environments.
Cave or cavern diving may be directly relevant to your work enviornments. Of course Northwoods Diver's list seems more directly relevant (except the Ice Diving)

Nope. You don't need AOW to take entry level PSD training. Just OW - dry suit and full face mask would be a benefit though.

Like Woods is saying. PSD is a totally different sort of diving than you're planning. You need a whole team, not just a buddy, to do it with specialized equipment that you probably wouldn't use for most sport diving.

Cave diving has its own niche. The cave divers with thousands of cave dives should be the only ones called upon for recovery work in caves but they wouldn't be of benefit in any other area ie ice, regular open water etc. PSD is usually not just low vis, its zero vis. Most sport divers (including cave divers) don't intentionally operate in zero vis (or blackwater) as a PSD does. Its a different ballgame
So, unless your department wants to put together a cave rescue/recovery team (many years and thousands of $) I don't see how you could pitch cave training - unless you fake it and give them a line of BS:wink:.

Please don't try to ever operate as a PSD without the actual PSD training that applies to it!



I wish you luck though. I hope you get all the training you want
 

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