How Prepared Is Your Safety Diving Team for a Bridge Collapse?

BY WALT “BUTCH” HENDRICK AND ANDREA ZAFERES

Public safety diving (PSD) has gone from being an “exotic” within a fire or police department to the norm. The size of the department, whether it is career or volunteer, or the amount of water in the jurisdiction doesn’t seem to be a criterion for establishing such a team. Despite the growing number of teams with decades of experience, the key question of the day, sadly, is the same as it was more than 20 years ago: What is the mission of a PSD team? What levels of training and maintenance are required for the operations the team intends to perform? “(See “Training and Maintenance Requirements for PSD Teams” on page 76.) How can we establish regional specialty dive teams to ensure reasonable response time for mass-casualty underwater emergencies? And, in the absence of that, what is the Go/No Go risk assessment for local teams during the immediate potential lifesaving part of the emergency?

The catastrophic collapse of the eight-lane I-35W bridge in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in August has made it more imperative than ever that these questions be answered. Such a collapse sends trucks, cars, trains, and human bodies into the water—in this case, the Mississippi River. In addition, twisted metal, cables, concrete, and other debris were scattered and piled on top of each other in every direction, some in the most tenuous ways.

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(1, 2) These sonar images show the old river bed and the road decking and trusses of Kimberling City (MO) truss bridge. The total depth is 175 feet. The sonar was above the bridge, and there was a great deal of wave action, which distorts the images by causing reflections. Lake Taneycomo was created at the site, and a dam also was ultimately constructed. The old bridge remains today, many fathoms below the surface. The waters of the lake caused it to submerge before it could be dismantled. [Photos by Lee Summit (MO) Underwater Recovery Unit.]

This disaster gave new meaning to underwater search and rescue/recovery (US&R/R) or water search and rescue/recovery (WSAR/R). A bridge collapse water operation is similar to urban search and rescue/recovery, with added dynamics.

What are these dynamics? First, water adds pressure differentials¹ that can cause lung overexpansion injuries, ear barotrauma, and other minor to potentially life-threatening gas-bubble injuries. There is a constant need for a source of breathing gas, which is used up more quickly as depth increases. The dynamics may likely include the following:

• Zero visibility and even blackwater. Not only will the diver not be able to visualize the debris, but the debris may be sharp, hanging tenuously, or ending in seriously confined spaces. The divers would require highly trained tenders to continuously guide and monitor them. Just as the divers cannot see, the tenders also cannot see the divers unless they are using specific types of very expensive sonar, which may not work when inside the debris.
• Currents.
• Floating and hidden hazmat problems in which the divers are immersed.
• The need for properly anchored operational platforms, such as boats or floating barges.
• Short search times (a maximum of 15 to 25 minutes) because of air management, diver and tender concentration capabilities, cold stress, loss of hand dexterity from heat loss, dehydration, diver rotation, and other issues.
• Aquatic animal concerns such as water moccasins, alligators, snapping turtles, and less-threatening critters such as eels and fish that bump you in the blackness.

UNDERWATER SAR/R VS. US&R/R TEAMS

Let’s examine some of the basic ways Underwater SAR/R teams differ from US&R/R teams.

Uniformity in Training

US&R/R teams can come from all over the country and be trained in similar techniques and operations. Training facilities around the world, like Reykjavik, Iceland, teach procedures similar to those taught in the collapse school in the Calgary Fire Department Training Academy in Alberta, Canada. US&R/R teams have a trained, unified command structure and understand safety procedures and how to use the proper equipment for the job at hand. They have trained backup teams.

(3) In rescue mode, victims are not bagged on the bottom. Teams need to practice how to bring victims up while keeping the airway as dry as possible. For recovery situations, divers practice bagging bodies and body parts underwater. (Photos courtesy of authors.)

On the other hand, Underwater SAR/R teams are rarely similar. Within a single county, you can have teams that wear wetsuits and sport masks and octopuses who use handheld tether lines with buddy divers. Then there are other teams in vulcanized rubber drysuits, full face masks, quick-release pony bottles, harnesses with locking carabiners, and highly trained tenders who can run safe and effective solo tendered-directed dives. The former teams have a contingency plan of “send the backup diver down when the diver rapidly pulls the line and the backup diver feels around the needy diver to figure out what the problem is.” The latter teams have well-practiced blackwater contingency plans with diver-to-diver hand signals, a graduated system of help-line signals, and contingency equipment.

(4) Well-practiced contingency plans are a must. These two fire department divers are practicing using each other’s quick-release gas switching blocks while wearing gloves over their hazmat dry gloves. When diving in debris-filled environments with currents, contingency divers should have a way of providing an entrapped diver with additional air sources, such as a surface supply line, without removing the diver’s mask.

How can these teams in the same county provide mutual aid to each other on a bridge collapse site when they cannot assist each other on standard calls? The answer is that they cannot. And the bigger question is, are any of these teams trained and equipped to respond to such a call?

(5) Debris divers need dexterity when searching, to assist in managing entanglements and to search for a small body part (finger) that may be within the diver’s reach. Items such as carabiners and quarters are used as search objects in basic search classes to develop this dexterity.

The majority of dive teams have basic training only; they dive in sport diving-configured equipment and often have poor and only tabletop self-rescue plans. Usually, there is poor funding at best for professional training and equipment. Where can PSD teams even go to get training for such large-scale incidents as a bridge collapse when they realize they need this training? Only a couple of professional companies do this type of training.

(6) Divers need to learn how to feel debris underwater to help prevent and manage entrapments and entanglements and move debris to access bodies.

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Federal and State Regulations

Where do the state or federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration come into play in relation to PSD teams? Are they still exempt when it comes to confined-space operations, which bridge collapse dives can be? Are they exempt when the job requires commercial or military diving capabilities by divers and tenders who have hundreds or thousands of hours of experience instead of PSD divers with fewer than 50 to 100 dives?

What Are the Benefits?

In US&R/R, victims have been saved after days or even weeks (up to 16 days) of entrapment, which is very different from Underwater SAR/R, where the only people who can be saved are those on the surface or, in extremely rare circumstances, in a location accessible to divers who can reach them while they are still viable.

Victims submerged in vehicles usually have no air pockets in which to breathe or survive. To survive, submerged bridge collapse victims would have to be in a totally encapsulated airtight pressurized environment with a volume of air large enough to dilute the exhaled carbon dioxide to prevent suffocation.

Visibility

On land. Once the dust has settled, artificial lighting can be introduced in any number of ways, anything from handheld to stationary halogen. Practically every fire and rescue company in our country carries portable high-intensity lighting. Thousands of feet of cable can be run to support a single light source or a passage for access. Once lighting has been established, rescuers can see and can focus on specific items of danger. Rescuers can plan the reaction of an action—how to support an item to remove another item. Visibility allows for planned movements, thereby reducing the extent of the unknown danger.

Underwater. If there is no visibility because of turbulence or particles in the water, no amount of light can change it. You won’t even notice a 10,000-watt light. An infrared unit that can see in the dark but cannot light up the area can see only what it is looking at. Without light, every movement is a danger; actions can require three times the amount of planning and measuring before anything can be done. Unless they have been taught some tricks, divers may not even be able to monitor their own remaining gas supply. Visibility, or the lack of it, is typically our number-one issue.

Sonar can be used to help map out areas of debris that can be viewed by the sonar. But, sonar cannot read through concrete or other materials; it does not work like an X-ray machine reading through a body. So where a US&R/R technician can hold a light around a corner to peer into another space, sonar may be completely ineffective. The key difference is that US&R/R technicians see the collapse for themselves in live time. Divers only have access to sonar pictures when they are sitting on land or on a platform. They cannot access these visuals while diving.

Currents

On land. Usually, there are no currents in US&R/R. The definition of a land scene is that there is no water in the scene. Once part or all of the collapse is submerged, that location becomes an underwater scene. The Minneapolis bridge collapse was no longer a land scene. Only divers could enter the underwater part of that scene, and currents existed only in the water.

Underwater. Currents are a major issue. First, divers should dive into water with currents greater than one-half knot in a downstream manner, since currents greater than this make it very difficult to move divers back and forth parallel to shore.

The accuracy of the search can be seriously compromised, and divers can become overexerted and have far greater air consumption rates. Most importantly though, what is the contingency plan for performing an effective rescue of your own when diving from shore in currents greater than one-half knot?

(7) Stationary platforms that can be moved at will are necessary to work from on a bridge collapse site. These Nashua (NH) Fire Department boat operators are learning to perform hurricane anchoring in water up to four knots. (Photo courtesy of authors.)

We have met teams who perform such dives, but we have not met teams who can physically and realistically demonstrate effective contingency plans for divers who are entrapped or entangled in fast-water dives performed from shore. Currents have the potential of moving debris at any time; the constant force is an unknown on all objects underwater. Put a diver in the wrong place and at the wrong angle to a current as little as one knot,⁴ and the resulting force can be such that the diver may require assistance to get out. One knot is a physical movement of 100 feet of moving water per minute, or 1.7 feet per second—a force of approximately 15 psi on the diver’s body. A force of three knots equals 16.8 psi on the legs and 33.6 psi on a body stuck or not physically moving.

In moving water such as urban rivers, there is the constant threat of surface and subsurface moving debris such as logs, couches, and tires. They can injure divers. If a diver becomes trapped by such debris, the force pushing against the diver can be increased by the additional surface area of the item that is also affected by the current.

(8) To prepare for the blackwater of a bridge collapse incident, divers should always dress without looking so that they learn how to manipulate their equipment completely by feel. The fact that this diver is using his eyes to close his chest strap could be an indicator that he may not be very confident should he have to remove his buoyancy compensator device to get out of an entrapment. Notice the spread-out hose wrap on the pony regulator hose. Only the pony hose has this wrap, which allows divers to easily feel it with thick gloves should it become disconnected from the neck strap. (Photos courtesy of authors.)

And, keep in mind that in a low- to zero-visibility river, none of this is visually avoidable.

The risk of a diver’s becoming entrapped against debris by current goes up when the amount of debris or the current increases. Bridge collapses definitely increase the amount of debris and number of obstructions, which in themselves can increase currents. So it is a double risk.

(9) At minimum, divers should be wearing hazmat tested suits and full-face masks, true redundant air, and electronic communication systems. If there should be a truck with a higher-level of hazmat contaminants submerged from a bridge collapse, this diver and tender would not be wearing appropriate personal protective equipment for the conditions.

Without sufficient advanced training, a typical PSD diver can hardly work safely in water moving faster than 1.25 knots, even from a platform. We can dive in water faster than one-half knot from platforms, because tending from upstream allows divers to perform arcs across the current or vertical box searches when the current becomes more severe. Tending from upstream allows for effective contingency plans.

A functional support rescue plan in two knots or greater requires significant practice. It is not uncommon for bridges to span waterways with such currents. What is astounding is the number of PSD teams with such water in their jurisdictions who were never taught how to calculate a current to even begin to make safe and effective Go/No Go decisions. We meet teams all the time who were taught to look at water movement in cubic feet per second (CFS), which is a volume—not a speed. Moreover, a team cannot calculate CFS on-scene, and CFS does not help teams calculate how far a diver or victim will drift in “x” time and “y” depth. What is the maximum CFS for operations from shore? From a platform?

(10) If currents are greater than 1.25 knots, tether lines should be run through 8s to give tenders sufficient control of the diver’s movements. This is especially important in debris dives.

In addition to entrapment, entanglement, and injury, current can cause significant overexertion if dives are not properly conducted. A diver who typically has a good eight to 10 breath-per-minute rate (bpm) with a 20 psi/minimum surface air consumption (SAC) rate in still water can find himself breathing 22 to 25 bpm in a one- to two-knot current, with a SAC rate increase to more than 100 psi/min. Overexertion can greatly increase the risk of panic, one of the most common causes of diver fatality.

And if all that is not enough, current can cause other problems, such as the following:

• Tenders will find it difficult to impossible to pull divers in against a current greater than 1.5 knots and can find themselves flying into the water if they try. Surface support training and equipment for moving water dives are critical.
• Divers attempting to dive in half masks can have the masks ripped off their face if they turn sideways to a four-knot current.
• Counting a diver’s breathing rate by watching the bubbles becomes increasingly difficult as current increases, which is one of the many reasons electronic communications should be used.
• Chase boats downstream become necessary in case a tender falls in or an accidental diver disconnect occurs.
• Upstream spotters for incoming surface debris may be needed.

(11) The underwater recovery unit prepares 360 sonar to search for a vehicle. In moving water, a pole is typically used instead of a tripod. [Photo by Lee Summit (MO) Underwater Recovery Unit.]

Finally, if not well trained, divers have a tendency to overweight more than usual when they dive in currents. Overweighting is dangerous and is a factor in too many diver fatalities.

Floating and Hidden Contaminants

On land. Obviously, there are many different contaminant concerns on land and in confined space rescue. We will accept as fact that they are there and can be problematic.

Underwater. Contaminated water diving is not a joke. There can be fuel oils from cars, trucks, buses, and tankers. Submerged trucks and train cars may have been carrying hazardous materials. Divers cannot read hazmat placards on submerged tankers.

Just think of the procedures used on land to determine if a truck involved in an accident is safe to approach. Think about what is taught to every basic EMT and responding fire rescue company: Look for hazmat signs, approach upwind, approach uphill, stay at least 100 feet away. Yet, what happens when divers are asked to submerge on a collapsed bridge incident with dozens of unknown vehicles when the likelihood is that badly damaged vehicles are lying in all directions and positions on the bottom? Divers enter the water hoping there isn’t a truck lying in its side leaking a chemical that could cause serious harm. Or, perhaps they are not even thinking about it.

What is the team’s contingency plan if there is such a truck? Is a hazmat team on standby at the scene ready to take care of divers and surface personnel? Are EMS personnel prepared to handle possibly contaminated victims if the operation is still in rescue mode?

These considerations are in addition to the river’s normal contaminants. When the team arrives, some contaminants may have already begun gravitating to the surface while others may be waiting for only a slight movement to be released and begin diluting in the water. Standard scuba does not belong in this environment; this is not a simple car in the water—quick in, quick out. Hazmat dry suits that have extensive reported testing are mandatory. Full face masks are mandatory and the minimum. Surface-supplied gas might be mandatory depending on what is potentially in the water.

Should divers be carrying and training in how to use knives or shears/wire cutters? You might wonder what that has to do with the contaminated water issue. When you have seen more than one diver surface with a slash in a dry suit after working an entanglement with a knife, the answer becomes no. That is just one example of many contaminated water diving issues that are too often overlooked.

Pressure Differentials

On land. Unless the operation’s location is at high altitude, atmospheric pressure is not a real concern.

Underwater. Pressure increases by 0.432 psi per foot of fresh water, and Boyle’s law says that pressure and volume are inversely proportional. This means that the deeper you go, the denser the gas you breathe becomes, so you breathe that much more gas with each breath.

Hence, depth directly affects how long a diver’s air will last. The deeper you go, the more air you consume, so the shorter the dive time. Combine that fact with increased work load, and the air goes even faster. As stated earlier, in poor or zero visibility, most divers have no way of monitoring their own gas supply unless they use the trick of duct taping a strong freezer sandwich bag filled with freshwater over their gauge. If you hold the bag up to the mask and shine a small light sideways through the bag, you can read the gauge in the blackest water.

Unless divers are on surface-supplied gas, where the gas supply can be monitored, or you have a tender who knows how to use breathing rates and depth air-consumption rates to make a fairly close air-consumption calculation, there may be no way for divers to know how much of their life support systems is left. And even the best tender in the world can’t figure air consumption without an electronic communication system if the diver or his exhausted bubbles go under something prior to reaching the surface.

Because divers breathe ambient pressure air at depth, they are subject to the risk of serious injury or even death should they ascend more than three to four feet while holding a full breath. Such lung overexpansion injuries as pneumothorax, tension pneumothorax, subcutaneous emphysema, mediastinal emphysema, and arterial gas embolism can result.

There are other forms of barotrauma that US&R teams do not have to be concerned about, such as perforated ear drums, round window rupture,⁵ sinus squeeze, and suit squeeze.

In dive operations at altitudes greater than 1,000 feet, the pressure differential is compounded by the reduced atmospheric pressure. At some high altitudes in Colorado, for example, instead of having to go to 34 feet in a sea level lake, a diver has to go only to 25 feet to reach a second atmosphere absolute to increase the pressure by twice that of the surface. The high altitude diver at only 25 feet will use the same amount of air when at 34 feet sea level.

Debris

On land. Debris hung or supported tenuously is dangerous no matter how you look at it. Of course, there is the fact that you can look at parts or all of it on land. More often than not, you cannot see it underwater.

Underwater. Not only can we not see the debris, but our movements can affect it. For the most part, PSD divers are bottom dwellers, crawling along the bottom. As an industry, PSD divers do not typically understand buoyancy control or suspended weightless diving. PSD divers have a tendency to be well overweighted and may not understand how little a movement it takes to alter a suspended object in the water. We typically remove an average of six pounds of lead from our PSD students, and it is not rare for us to remove as much as 10, 15, or even 20 pounds from a diver.

Most PSD divers do not have midwater skills capable of allowing them to be physically quiet in the water column. Because of the lack of visibility, they often do not know when they have moved into or under something. Until they touch it, they don’t know it is there. The simple act of removing a human body can alter an entire support system. Divers cannot know how their exhausted bubbles are affecting the objects above, whether they are eroding support or allowing contaminants to be released.

Unless you have had extended-penetration wreck-diving experience or training in this type of large-debris environment, this is a whole new ball game, and only fully trained, experienced divers belong there.

Sharp or jagged debris can cause injury, entanglements, and entrapments. How many PSD divers have practiced swimming through hula hoops or obstacle courses while being blacked out? Far too few. Yet, this lack of training/experience would not stop some teams from attempting to dive in a bridge collapse incident.

Support Vessels

On land. Knowing where to place support vehicles and how to access the operational area is of key importance.

Underwater. These operations require well-placed vessels/platforms that are multianchored properly so they become little islands placed in proper positions for direct line/umbilical access to the operational area based on depth and speed of water, all mathematically calculated. The average dive team, if it has a boat, does not have the proper anchors, chain, and length of line to secure a vessel in this fashion. Very few teams know how to properly secure a three- or four-point anchoring system. A properly anchored platform must be able to have its position adjusted (in, out, left, right) on command, but not by accident. Such platforms need to be environmentally all-conditions-capable and contain all needed life support.

Mutual Aid

On land. The small and major disasters that have occurred over the past two decades demonstrated that urban collapse teams can come together from all over the country, and even from all over the world, to work effectively together. A team from northern California can work with a team from southern Florida.

Underwater. This is definitely not true for PSD teams. As described earlier, teams in neighboring counties are likely to have very different equipment and are also likely to have differences in procedures that would make it very difficult for them to work together. For example, we train divers with a blackwater hand-signal system so a primary diver can communicate “I am entangled here,” “I am hurt here,” “I am out of air” (which means the diver is breathing on pony bottle air), and “I am ready to ascend with you.” Other trainers instead might use the approach of having only backup divers go down and figure out what the problem is, which can result in lost time, higher stress, dislodged regulators/masks, and further impalement on a fish hook. Such different contingency plans are not compatible.

Tenders/Trained Surface Support Staff

On land. Support or operational personnel need training in the specific operational needs. Again, land teams train all the time; members practice their skills. Operations and technician members know how to work together and what to expect from each other. They can count on each other.

Underwater. A good tender may have to be a more highly trained person than the diver. Tenders are professionally trained and are responsible for every aspect of the diver’s safety, including all equipment and procedure issues. A tender is also responsible for putting the diver in the correct search area and for deciding if a searched area can be secured or should be re-searched. A diver has only two jobs—keeping the tether line taut and using the mind’s eye to search. Tenders are keeping track of times, breathing rates, diver locations, tether line distances, diver air consumption, snags, diver search speeds, and much more.

Tenders can feel the diver’s every movement and understand how to respond to that need. They know when the diver’s tether or umbilical is entangled and what to do about it. They know how to communicate through a line to keep their diver safe when the electronic communication system goes down. They know how to dress the diver. They truly understand everything about the job and the dangers the diver may encounter. They can run professional contingency plans. A good tender can make a less experienced diver look good, get the job done, and be safe the whole time.

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After training divers around the world in all kinds of environments for more than 40 years, we advise every team we train to ask the following questions: Are we capable of this job? Is there a life that can be saved other than our own? Have we trained for this type of operation? What can possibly go wrong? Do we have a realistically trained and practiced plan for getting out our own? If you do not know how you would get your people out, do not put them in. Don’t go in.

Very few teams have the equipment, the training, and the practiced contingency plans to perform a fast-moving water bridge collapse operation effectively and, most importantly, safely. If communities want PSD teams to respond to such incidents and enter such waters, they need to provide the funding for them to do it right and safely.

All PSD teams should sit down and seriously discuss the types of water operations that pose the highest risks in their jurisdictions and then realistically assess what they are capable of doing safely now. Other issues that should be discussed include the types of operations the team wants to grow toward, what needs to be done to accomplish that, and how to identify the potential Go/No Go operations and ensure that every officer and team member understands that a No Go operation is a “stay out of the water” incident. A bridge collapse is just one example most of us have to consider.

Endnotes

1. 0.432 psi/ffw, 0.445 psi/fsw

2. We say “situation” instead of “emergency,” because if divers are properly trained, are wearing quick-release pony bottles, and have a contingency bottle on-scene, then a loss of primary air is simply an inconvenience, not a life-threatening emergency.

3. A common misconception is that pony bottles are entanglement hazards. This is not true when the bottles are worn properly and divers need a true alternate air source, particularly in view of the potential for entanglement hazards.

4. The minimum current to be considered swiftwater according to National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) 1670, Standard on Operations and Training for Technical Search and Rescue Incidents. What may be minimal for surface swiftwater operations, though, can be considerable for underwater operations.

5. If the diver blows too forcefully during the Valsalva ear-equalization maneuver, the round window between the middle and inner ear could perforate, resulting in serious, long-lasting vertigo, vomiting, and infection.

Training and Maintenance Requirements for PSD Teams

Most dive teams started with a few firefighters or police officers with recreational scuba certifications who wanted to help their communities. They dove for fun in the local lake or quarry. They combined their fire or law enforcement know-how with their sport diving experience and equipment to operate as search divers.

There are many problems with this. Sadly, people do not drown only in water considered safe for sport diving. They drown in fast-moving rivers and contaminated water, they drown in submerged vehicles, and sometimes they die under very thin ice. And, as the country tragically saw this summer, dive teams may be dispatched to a disaster like a bridge collapse. The difference between diving in a local neighborhood lake and a bridge collapse disaster is equivalent to the differences between fighting a small house fire and working a fully involved high-rise with realistic collapse potential.

The norm still seems to be to take a basic sport diving class, which is not designed for rescue work and provides only the basics for recreational diving. At the end of the class, you are in business and can go underwater. Consider also that some sport diving courses may have been a 16-hour weekend wonder, as opposed to the 35- to 45-hour open-water program that teaches strong basic skills.

The key word to start with is “basic,” because that is what the vast majority of dive teams that have PSD certifications have as their maximum level of training. Basic PSD certification does not get you in a fast-moving river or contaminated water and certainly does not make a team prepared to dive around, over, and under major debris in still water, let alone moving water.

VISIBILITY

Below are a few examples of what basic low- to zero-visibility PSD involves:

• Divers must be confident and have reflexive, strong, entry-level skills such as powerful kicking skills, comfortable underwater breathing without a mask, a relaxed breathing rate of six to 12 breaths per minute during basic searches, good neutral buoyancy control skills, and two-second/foot blackwater ascent rates.
• An operational plan must be developed and a command system for diving must be implemented.
• To allow divers to search with both hands simultaneously, the diver should dive alone, be tethered, and be directed by the tender through the diver harness.
• The diver must know how to conduct arc, dock walk, and vertical box searches (for bottoms with tall grass or heavy debris) from shore in water moving at less than 0.5 knots (50 feet/min) and from boats or other platforms in water moving less than 1.25 knots (125 feet/min).
• Tenders must know how to calculate and document a diver’s breathing rate to figure out how much air a blackwater diver has at any point during the dive within about 200 psi.
• Tenders must know how to manage line snags.
• Training should include developing hands-on blackwater contingency plans for out-of-air situations,2 entanglement, out-of-air with concurrent entanglement, and injury.

  -Practice using a true alternate air source such as a quick-release pony bottle,3 followed by a contingency bottle or contingency surface supplied air.

  -Divers must learn how to use basic cutting tools to save themselves or other divers.

  -Develop blackwater communication between primary and backup divers when electronic communication systems fail or are not available.

• The ability to draw accurate search profile maps as the diver moves to document what ground was covered and what was not.
• Produce court-ready documentation after each dive to show whether or not a diver’s search area can be secured or needs to be re-searched in part or whole. This will tell subsequent tenders where to put their divers.
• The ability to determine the most likely location of the search objects based on scene evidence, witness reenactments, interviews, witnesses’ written statements, and environmental conditions and variables.
• Employ techniques for preventing accidents such as the following: duct-taping outside fin straps, wearing gauge and dry-suit hoses under the arm through the BCD armhole, capable of maximum dive times in good conditions of 20 to 25 minutes, always returning home with at least 1,000 psi, not exceeding maximum depths of 50 to 60 feet, using a tether line with a maximum length of 125 feet, diving at a 45° degree angle away from the tender to keep the line continuously taut, ditching weights before exiting the water, proper weighting, making sure inflated BCDs do not float divers face-down on the surface, predive facial acclimation, documenting diver breathing rates every five minutes, documenting diver movements with premeasured and marked tether lines, and standard operating procedures that list what teams can and cannot with their current level of training and equipment.
• Recognize when the operation is beyond your scope of training and capabilities.

These are just some of the many skills divers and tenders should learn in an entry-level PSD training program.

However, learning and practicing the basics are not enough for teams that want to conduct advanced dive operations such as those involving submerged vehicles, ice diving, moving-water operations, large-area or deep extended-range dives, and contaminated water.

Most times, team members or budget decision makers do not see the necessity for advanced training. This is amazing when you watch the tens of thousands of firefighters who pour into such excellent shows as FDIC every year for hands-on training, purchase training materials, and attend seminars to strengthen their basic firefighting skills and to learn advanced ones. The fire service and the land-based rescue community understand that advanced training and equipment are required for advanced operations. Why does this not carry over to water operations?

WALT “BUTCH” HENDRICK, the founder of Lifeguard Systems, has been training public safety dive teams and surface rescue personnel for more than 35 years in more than 15 countries and is an innovator, international award winner, and contributor to the water rescue/recovery industry. He began his dive career in the late 1950s in his family’s water sport resort in Puerto Rico. Among the hundreds of teams he has trained were those for the Washington, DC, FAA; U.S. Parks Department; Fire Department of New York; U.S. Coast Guard; Malaysian Fire Rescue; National South African; NYC DEP, and 210th Rescue Squad Para Jumpers. He has hundreds of published articles, plus several videos and books, including Public Safety Diving, Ice Diving Operations, Homicidal Drowning Investigation, and Surface Ice Rescue.

ANDREA ZAFERES is a course director for Lifeguard Systems in Shokan, New York.