After qualifying for the SAR team I had my eyes set on the Dive Rescue team. I had always been a good swimmer and with the things I did in the military I was ready for that challenge. You had to be a Police, Fire or SAR professional for a year to join. After I joined the Dive Rescue Team I liked it so much I went on to become a Public Safety Scuba Instructor (PSSI). It was under this role that many critical life experiences were gained.
The Dive Rescue Team is a separate 911 agency comprised of full-time police, Fire and volunteer SAR personnel. The Dive Rescue mission is to respond to any water incident and rescue or recover the victims and bring them home.
I have always been very comfortable in the water. As a young kid we went the beach often and were familiar with how to negotiate the ocean and its currents. In later years I was formally trained as an excellent technical swimmer by an English Olympic coach. Twice a week at a pound–fifty ($3.00 dollars) per lesson she would torture me in the water for a couple hours. After years of informal ocean contact and many years of formal training… I was very formidable in any water environment and ready to become a PSSI.
The PSSI program is run by Dive Rescue International (DRI) and is focused completely on the training of Public Safety Divers (PSD). It is one of the only world class organizations that cater to the 911 rescue community. Dive Rescue personnel come from Law Enforcement, SAR Teams and Fire Departments around the globe.
I was selected to attend this program by my team to attend this course. In order to attend you must have completed many of the PSD courses including Medical Dive Principles, Swift Water Rescue and Ice Diving. You need to be a very good swimmer with a relaxed attitude in the water and have strong academic abilities to understand the gas laws and dive physics.
As an instructor you entire mission is to prepare 911 divers for the dangerous environment where someone is already in jeopardy. Dive Rescue personnel are called when someone is trapped under the ice, in a vehicle that has plunged into the water, drowned in a body of water, river or lost in fast water someplace.
Entering the water alone in adverse conditions is very risky. Every year there is an average of five rescue divers that lose their lives. The startling part of this statistic is that these deaths all happen during what is called recovery mode.
The course lasted one week and was brutal with go or no go drills, constant evals in the water and lots of stress inoculation. It was run by a former Underwater Demolition Team (UDT/SEAL) from Tennessee and he was squared away and intense. We lost two out of the 12 members of the clas in the first day, both of which were SCUBA Instructors from civilian certifications. This was NOT a recreational dive certification. This was built for zero visability, under the ice and all manner of horrible diving conditions that 911 divers find them selves in.
On day one we spent most of the day in the water doing our basic swim repeated twice and floating in the deep end with 25 pound weight belts and four people. Each time the weights hit the bottom of the pool he would ad 5 minutes to the float time needed. We were in the water 55 minutes the first evolution and that is when the first two guys quit. We then repeated everything after getting ripped apart as pathetic souls who should not even be there.
The program was not designed to wash people out, it was designed with standards that were uncompromising. The nature of rescue water work is some of if not the most intense in the world, and only a few folks are cut out to perform those tasks let alone teach them to new candidates.
I ended up gratuating with the class leardership award. Tough and I will NEVER forget the lessons learned here.
The instructor constantly taught us that panic does not improve a declining situation. We would experience this first hand in the water by performing drills in black water with a partner.
Simply stated the question is asked; is recovering the victim worth the risk to the diver. In reality if this principle was applied literally no diver would ever enter the water as the risk is always high, especially in fast water (rivers) or under the ice.
Someone has to do it. We can’t just leave people behind in the harsh environments that caused their demise or death. While there is always underlying risks, it is the purpose of the Dive Team leadership, instructors and diver to mitigate that risk and get everyone back safely while at the same time accomplishing the mission.
The difference between Rescue mode or Recovery mode is set by the Incident Commander on scene and sometimes the Emergency Room (ER) lead doctor. It is dictated by the ability to get to the victim and resituate them. Often the timeframe will be one hour for a drowning, but it can be as long as one and a half hours.
In Rescue mode you work as fast and as safe as possible to get the victims out of the danger zone and to the ER. In recovery mode things should slow down and safety should become even more paramount.
Rarely is it completely safe, but from a rescue standpoint we are looking at things like flammable fluid around the scene, is the car still running etc. The key is to remember that you have been called to an environment that has put someone else in jeopardy. Look at the scene quickly and determine if it is appropriate to commit rescue personnel to the rescue/recovery operation.
After I became a Dive Rescue Instructor, the opportunity to go on National recoveries increased as these calls came from Dive Rescue Headquarters and only included qualified instructors.