By Walt “Butch” Hendrick and Andrea Zaferes
At 9 p.m. on February 25, 1985, a van with five young passengers sped down a city street and then lost control. It flew off a 10-foot-high embankment and plunged into 15 feet of water in the Mill Basin Creek in Brooklyn, New York. Having recently completed underwater vehicle extrication training, firefighters from the Fire Department of New York’s Rescue Company 2 responded. Gearing up en route, the divers arrived fully prepared to enter the 31°F black water. Tethered with a surface tender, a diver entered the submerged van, where he found a 14-year-old girl and took her to the surface. The diver descended to the van again, and resuscitation efforts were begun on the girl. Although the four other youths in the van did not survive, the extricated girl made a full recovery. She was submerged for 27 minutes in not the cleanest of water. This incident requiring vehicle extrication skills was one of the first cases of coldwater drowning saves. (Based on an account by the late, then Captain, Ray Downey of FDNY Rescue 2.)
When you respond to a land-based motor vehicle accident, you reflexively use your senses. You see the twisted, collapsed metal; the possibly entrapped victims; and the victims’ injuries. You hear the sounds of victims and other responders. You smell for odors of fuel and alcohol. You feel for patient injuries and vital signs. Perceptions from these senses integrate instantly with the result that the brain knows what needs to be done and sets the body in motion. Rescuers know what to do. Command knows what to do. You have trained for this situation, and you know your job. What happens, though, if a vehicle goes in the water?
When you arrive on a submerged vehicle scene, you see an undisturbed water surface. There are none of the normal signs to cue you as to the best use of available personnel and equipment. Your prepackaged duties of being EMS, fire, or rescue no longer apply.
 (1) Entanglement is a major concern in underwater vehicle extrication. Cutting boxes make excellent underwater blacked out drills. (Photo by Pamela Mason.) |
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Without good water visibility, there is not much to see besides how or where the vehicle may have entered the water. Training in underwater vehicle extrication should teach responders to begin using the mind’s eye to visualize the underwater scene. This is critical for rapidly creating a safe and effective plan of action.
We know from experience and such resources as the Michigan State Police S.T.A.R. research1 that cars normally take more than three minutes to fully submerge. For example, a reenactment of the incident in which Susan Smith rolled her car down a boat ramp, killing her two sons, demonstrated that it took more than six minutes for the car to fully submerge. Other types of vehicles may submerge more quickly. The S.T.A.R. research showed that traditional school bus windshields are likely to dramatically blow out with front-first entries.
The more airtight the vehicle, the longer it will float. See if witnesses can say what kind of car it was, consider the weather to estimate the probability of the window positions on entry, and then factor in current and wind variables to calculate the most likely location of the submerged vehicle. Susan Smith’s car was found 125 feet from shore. The last vehicle our team worked on involved a car moving more than 30 mph over a 10- to 12-foot-high cliff and on the bottom 61 feet from shore. Meet with mutual-aid teams to look at all known vehicle incidents and review data on the car model, the state of the car when found (damage, window positions), the distance from the shore, environmental conditions (depth, current, wind), and any known information on how the vehicle entered the water. This can prove to be very useful information for future calls.
While a hot search zone is being calculated, a search for passengers or pedestrians who may be at the water surface or on shore should be planned. Infants have been known to float when ejected from vehicles because of their higher fat-to-muscle ratio and air trapped in diapers or clothing. One infant was found floating after such an ejection; the cause of death was hypothermia—not drowning.2 Helicopters, boats, dogs, and searchers on foot are viable resources to deploy for such an incident. If a vehicle went through the ice, pay close attention to any other ice holes that could be from passengers who escaped from the vehicle and then fell through the ice away from the vehicle.3
The surface search should also include looking for fuel and other objects that may have left the vehicle and are now floating at the water surface, which can give additional clues on vehicle location. If there is wind or a current, then it would be necessary to estimate the depth to calculate where the vehicle is based on the location of floating fuel or items. As soon as possible, delegate someone to calculate water speed in knots by seeing how far an object floats in 30 seconds. One knot equals a rate of speed of 100 feet per minute. If the object, for example, floats 75 feet in 30 seconds, then the rate of travel is 1.5 knots.4
 (3) Suspending a diver with a boat lift device makes land vehicle drills more realistic. |
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Conduct the following drill: Release vegetable oil from the bottom and see how long it takes to reach the surface; then convert that time to minutes. Once you know the time it takes for oil to surface from a particular depth, multiply that time by the speed of the current for the distance of travel.
Once a hot zone is designated, you need a dive team with the appropriate underwater vehicle extrication training/certification and equipment. If a team does not have the right training or equipment, it should not be allowed to dive. There are serious hazards to understand and mitigate, and the benefit is small. If the vehicle is submerged, then all the passengers are dead. A team can choose to respond in a rescue mode with only slim hopes of a successful resuscitation leading to a patient’s coming out of a coma and having any quality of life.
The next step is to figure out the safest and most effective place and way to deploy the primary diver. If the water has low or zero visibility, divers should be tethered and the tender directed to provide direct line access to the shore and the backup divers. If unable to see, divers will not know where they are going or where they have been and can easily miss an object the size of a car, let alone an ejected child.
Some divers choose to use sport diver-type patterns that involve buddy divers working their way back and forth along a line with weights at either end that are moved an arm’s length out each time a sweep is completed. This is not as effective a search pattern as a solo-diver-tethered-tender-directed pattern for a variety of reasons and does not provide direct access between the diver and topside help.
The maximum tether line length under good conditions is 125 feet. If it is believed that the submerged vehicle is farther out, then a boat with three anchors (hurricane anchoring) becomes necessary as a dive platform. If the current is more than .5 knots, the operation cannot be conducted from shore, and a dive platform becomes necessary. If the current is greater than 1.25 knots, the decision most likely should be a “no go” unless the team has extensive public safety diving (PSD) moving-water training.
As with other low- or zero-visibility PSD dive operations, submerged vehicle divers should be back on deck with at least 1,000 psi in an 80-cu.-ft. cylinder; maximum dive times are 20 to 25 minutes; there is a primary tender, backup tender, backup diver, and 90-percent-ready diver for each primary diver down; and the backup tender documents the primary diver’s every location on a profile map and should document the diver’s breathing rate every five minutes to calculate how much air the diver has at any point during the dive. The team should have well-practiced, specific, zero-visibility hand-to-hand signals for “I am entangled,” “I am hurt,” and “I am out of air” to allow the most effective rescue of a primary diver.
Direct line access is defined as a straight, taut line between the diver and the diver’s tender and is critical for an accurate search pattern, for quickly recognizing when a diver is snagged, to decrease the chance of line entanglement, and to rapidly reach a needy primary diver. In nonvehicle dives, direct line access is easily achieved and maintained by the diver’s being tethered in an effective harness and by maintaining a 45° angle away from the tender without holding onto the line. Once the vehicle is found, direct line access may be lost as the diver reaches into the vehicle. For this reason, the tethered backup diver is sent down the primary diver’s line with a contingency strap once the primary diver gives the “object found” signal. The backup diver then serves as the primary diver’s tender on the bottom, and direct line access is maintained between the primary diver and the backup diver. Once this is in place, the primary diver can investigate the state of the vehicle to determine the best location inside or outside the vehicle to begin searching for victims. The backup diver can carry the bungee cords for securing a door open and can pass them to the primary diver when necessary.
 (5) Divers should learn how to work with severe entanglements to prepare for the worst-case situation underwater. |
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 (6) A diver finds an empty car seat and proceeds to search the car for a child or any signs that a child was in the vehicle. |
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HAZARDS
Following are some of the hazards involved in underwater vehicle extrication.
Vehicle shifting, resulting in diver entrapment. Never get on the downstream side of a vehicle in a current moving faster than one-quarter of a knot (25 feet per minute). The moving water will eddy on the downstream side, and the eddying will begin digging a hole in soft bottom just past the car. The hole may eventually become large enough for the car to flip and fall into, creating the potential for entrapping a diver under the car.
Sharp objects and entanglements. Water is not compressible, so when a vehicle hits the water surface, the resulting damage can expose divers to sharp objects, jagged metal, broken glass, and plenty of entanglement hazards. Always be prepared for entanglements, which is our most common problem. A diver of the Sacramento Drowning Accident Recovery Team (DART) became seriously snagged during a vehicle call. By accident, he landed on the wrong vehicle, which had been down for quite some time. This vehicle was upside down with the underside covered in fish hooks. The diver did not know he was on the wrong vehicle and lay on the underside to set a tow hook. The fish hooks caught in his neoprene exposure suit in many different places along the length of his body. He learned to appreciate having a pony bottle and backup divers trained in air and entanglement management. The team also learned one of the many values of wearing EPDM vulcanized rubber drysuits (a must if divers may be exposed to petroleum and other contaminants) instead of neoprene suits and the value of hardwire electronic communication systems.
Gas-filled containers. Another hazard in-volves containers that have a gas in them. If dislodged, air-filled containers will shoot for the surface. A spare tire could hit a diver hard enough to possibly cause a head or neck injury. Training, therefore, should include the proper diver body position to decrease the risk of being hit by rapidly ascending objects as the diver searches inside a vehicle.
Confined space. When you enter a vehicle, you are entering a confined space. On land, you climb in and out of cars several times a day, so you may think nothing of entering a car underwater. But when was the last time you got in your car with a full exposure suit and scuba gear? That roomy sedan suddenly seems a lot smaller when you are wearing bulky dive gear and debris is floating all around. When divers poke their heads, arms, or—worse—their whole bodies into a car, they have entered one of the most dangerous diving environments possible: an overhead restriction that prevents direct access to the surface. Any overhead environment, be it a vehicle, an ice-covered pond, a cave, or a floating dock, is potentially extremely dangerous and requires training and careful procedures.
Vehicles may present some of the greatest hazards because they are such a small confined space. For example, the space inside a vehicle does not allow a backup diver to easily access a trapped primary diver to provide air and assistance in getting free. To make matters worse, submerged vehicles may have been damaged before or during water entry, thereby decreasing space and increasing restrictions.
Haz mats. Submerged vehicles present haz-mat problems including fuel, biohazards, and possibly other chemicals carried inside the vehicle. Even in a short period, gasoline, oil, and diesel fuel can break down the neoprene and latex of many exposure suits. On contact with the skin, they can cause burning and irritation. Fuel in the eyes can cause temporary blindness. High-octane aviation gasoline is particularly nasty because it eats suits faster and causes more severe burning and blindness. If divers aspirate oil-contaminated water through a wet-breathing regulator or take their regulators out of their mouths, they run the risk of lipoid pneumonia, a life-threatening condition.
Also consider what other substances might be in the vehicle. Cocaine, for example, can become an acid when exposed to water. Therefore, the haz-mat team should be called in for every submerged vehicle incident to help mitigate the floating fuel problem and to decontaminate divers and tenders as they leave the water site. In ice situations, divers may want to be deployed in a different hole than the one directly above the vehicle to stay out of the fuel slick. We have found that coating the divers with dishwashing liquid before water entry helps keep the fuels off them.
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Live victims. If you attempt to rescue victims from a vehicle that is only partially submerged, consider that victims inside may still be alert because they were able to keep their airways above water. Panicked, entrapped victims may grab you and possibly dislodge your air source. Approach such victims with caution. Use eye contact to calm down such victims; or, if possible, have someone from shore use a bullhorn or other amplifier to talk to victims to calm them down. However, do not remove your own regulator to talk with them. As stated above, removing your regulator can expose you to hazardous materials in the water.
Orientation. If the water depth is greater than the length of the vehicle, there is a good chance that the vehicle will lie on the bottom tires up. In this case, divers must work upside down in a supine position so that they are oriented to the vehicle in a normal fashion when searching for or extricating victims. Without excellent buoyancy control skills, divers are more likely to face entanglement and entrapment hazards. If there is any visibility, it should be maintained, which requires advanced buoyancy control skills. A stirred-up bottom almost always means that divers are overweighted and were not trained to swim across silty bottoms without creating a mess.
To protect divers from hazards, they need proper personal protection equipment that includes appropriate full face masks, haz-mat tested drysuits,6 quick-release pony bottles, harnesses with locking carabiners, backup diver contingency straps, an 80-cu.-ft. contingency cylinder, KevlarT glove liners, and three or more cutting tools (at least two shears or wire cutters mounted on the harness and the rest in the torso golden triangle area). Electronic communication systems are also strongly recommended and really should be mandatory if at all possible. Tenders should also wear appropriate personal protective equipment including gloves and personal flotation devices. Divers should carry strong bungee cords with steel S-hooks to secure open one or more vehicle doors.
TRAINING
You must have enough training and experience to safely work in black water and successfully manage entanglement, injury, and out-of-air-while-entangled problems. The only job you must successfully complete after every dive operation is to go home; thus, the most important parts of training are accident prevention and contingency plans.
If dive teams use electronic communication systems, they should make sure divers and tenders can manage the entangled, injury, and out-of-air contingency situations without these communication systems. Many teams say they would abort any dive if their communications failed. Although, generally, we believe it is not necessary to abort all failed communication system dives because line signals are very effective, we also believe that any choice that decreases risks is a good one. The problem arises, though, that a dive can be aborted only if the divers can reach the surface. Murphy’s Law is such that an electronic communication system is more likely to fail when the diver is entangled or entrapped. If contingency plans are not thoroughly practiced without electronic communication systems, the entrapped diver’s life is seriously at risk.
Too many teams and instructors do not think about problems realistically. For example, communication systems are worn in full face masks. If a diver runs out of air and needs to access a second air source, he must remove the full face mask unless he uses a block to access the second air source. Even if you have a block, a full face mask can be accidentally knocked off, which is particularly true during vehicle dives. A diver on our team had his mask knocked off as the chin of his mask knocked onto an open door as he descended in black water to search for the car. When it comes to training, realism is critical.
Another consideration is what to train for: Do you or do you not enter the vehicle? Many teams say they will not allow their divers to reach in or enter a vehicle because they operate only in recovery mode. Their plan of action is to set a tow hook and let the car be pulled out. If any passengers are inside, they will be removed when the vehicle is on land. That is an excellent standard, since entering a vehicle greatly increases risk for the diver. The problem with this, though, is that in the real world even strict recovery teams may some day be faced with a rescue situation. Will they stick to their no-vehicle-entry standard? Consider what happened to the Houston (TX) Police Department’s recovery dive team when it was suddenly faced with a school bus filled with handicapped children strapped in their wheelchairs on a flooded road and water rapidly rising above the children’s necks, or a dive team in South Africa that responded in a rescue mode to a double-decker bus filled with school children. Were divers in these two incidents going to follow a no-entry policy? No. As most teams would do, they went in.
Another time a diver may choose to enter a vehicle is when the windows are broken open and it is necessary to search for possible evidence of foul play. If the car is pulled out without first being searched, valuable evidence could be lost through the windows. It is more common than most people think for a submerged vehicle to be the result of suicide, homicide, a combination of both, or insurance fraud.
It may be worthwhile to check the contents of any vehicle with open windows before pulling it out, to prevent fraud. For example, say the car owner later claims he had a set of $1,500 golf clubs in the back seat that must have fallen out in the water. If the vehicle is well sealed, it may make more sense to document that it was sealed, keep it sealed, remove it, and then search it on land.
Training for rescue mode includes teaching divers how to secure open a passageway to reach and remove victims. Opening a door is the first choice; unfortunately, that is not always a possibility depending on damage and how the vehicle is resting. Divers need to learn how to move over the top of the vehicle to search for the best way to get inside. Never go around, because a tether line could become snagged under the vehicle.
When a door is opened, it is crucial to secure it open so it cannot close on the diver. This procedure was put in place after Walt Hendrick entered a van in black water to find the bodies of two boys in the 1970s. The fashion of that time was to put shag carpeting on van walls and ceilings. With a boy under each arm, Hendrick became entrapped under the ceiling carpet that fell down as his bubbles seeped through the carpeting, separating it from the ceiling. As he attempted to back out, he discovered that the van doors were closed. The lesson is, always secure open doors with strong, trucker bungee cords. Some teams prefer to jam wood wedges in the open door hinge; this is less effective because if the door is accidentally pushed open further, the wedges could fall out.
Divers must learn how to reach in a vehicle strewn with entanglement hazards and sharp debris and work with the backup diver to manage entanglements. Once divers can confidently work in a confined entanglement- and debris-filled space, it is time to work on searching for victims or evidence. This is followed by training on procedures for victim/evidence removal and transport to the surface. The last step is to learn how to set a tow hook and lift bags to assist with vehicle removal.
An important consideration for any action involved in vehicle removal is the possibility that the team may fall under OSHA standards because vehicle removal is not part of a rescue operation. The OSHA dive team exemption is not as black and white as it appears in the written documents. Discussions with OSHA representatives have proved that this issue is a bit muddier than anyone would like. Make sure to speak with your OSHA representative to see where your department falls for this type of operation.7
 (10) Because of the increased risks associated with vehicle dives, hardwire communication systems are highly recommended. |
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The team should begin training on land with instructors certified to teach underwater vehicle extrication. Begin by stringing the interior of the land vehicle with fishing line, string, and wire so the divers learn about entanglements and proper cutting methods. Place mannequins in the entanglement to simulate victims and in different positions inside the vehicles. Arbitrarily attach seat belts, and affix some belts so they must be cut. For teams that include searching for evidence in their dive duties, add small pieces of evidence in the vehicle, and require that all pieces of evidence be recovered before removing the vehicle.
Divers should wear full gear, except for tanks (plastic display tanks or rolled cardboard will make a good substitute), and attempt to extricate the mannequins and avoid entanglements. Initially, do not allow any verbal communication between divers or between divers and tenders. Use line pull signals. Once the mission can be accomplished without verbal communication (simulating electronic communication systems), then allow verbal communication.
When the team can successfully operate on right-side-up vehicles, place a training vehicle on its roof. You may choose to allow the vehicle to remain there for 24 hours before training, to monitor the integrity of the vehicle. Apply supports as necessary.
Divers should learn how to move “low and slow” to decrease the risks of being hit by a dislodged gas-filled container or injured by a sharp object.
During practices, keep in mind that working a real submerged vehicle extrication involves still more complications. Fuel in the water is a major concern to the diver, mostly during surface time, ascent, and descent. Divers should be trained to get below the surface quickly and out of the fuel-contaminated areas. There are liquids that can be put on the water’s surface and the diver’s gear that will repel some types of fuel oils. Check your local regulations to see whether you can use such detergents in your waterways, as they can be harmful to fish and other forms of water life.
Endnotes
1. S.T.A.R. Michigan State Police, 7426 N Canal Rd, Lansing, MI 48913, (517) 322-5606.
2. Teather, B. Encyclopedia of Underwater Investigations. (Flagstaff, Ariz.: Best Publish-ing), 1994.
3. Hendrick, W, A. Zaferes. Surface Ice Rescue. (Tulsa, Ok.: Fire Engineering/PennWell Publishing), 1999.
4. For more information, see Hendrick W, A. Zaferes, C. Nelson. Public Safety Diving. (Tulsa, Ok.: PennWell/Fire Engineering), 2000.
5. A block is a unit that allows the wearer to switch from one gas source or another. For example, on the mask-mounted block, when it is in the “down” position, the diver is breathing off the main 80-cu.-ft. cylinder. When the block is in the “up” position, the diver breathes off the 19-cu.-ft. pony bottle (contingency air). (These cu.-ft.volumes are most commonly used.) The mask-mounted block is called the second breath block.
6. Trellerborg Viking™ has haz-mat testing standards for their suits, which are available free on a CD; call (800) 344-4458.
7. http://www.osha.gov; OSHA publication office (202) 693-1888; OSHA Commercial Dive standard (1910 Subpart T—401-441); OSHA Confined Space (1910.146); OSHA Haz Mat (1910.120); ANSI Confined Space Life Safety (Z117.1-1989); Canadian CSA 275.4 Competency Standard for Diving Operations; USCG Diving Standards (46 CFR, CH. 1, Part 197, Subchapter V); Association of Diving Contractors http://www.adc-usa.org/.
WALT “BUTCH” HENDRICK is the founder, president, and training director of Lifeguard Systems. He has been teaching and performing water rescue operations for more than 35 years. He has trained in more than 15 countries and has trained dive teams for FDNY, Washington, D.C., South Africa, and the U.S. Parks Department, among others. He coauthored with Andrea Zaferes the Fire Engineering books Surface Ice Rescue (1999), Public Safety Diving (2000), and Ice Diving Operations (2003).
ANDREA ZAFERES is the head instructor trainer for Lifeguard Systems, Inc.; a NAUI and ACUC course director; a PADI, DAN, and ARC instructor; an EMT-D; and a noted author and public speaker. She teaches more than 30 courses including Underwater Vehicle Extrication, Rapid Deployment Search & Rescue Diving, Ice Rescue, Shark Attack Rescue, and Blackwater Rescue. With Hendrick she started RIPTIDE, a drowning prevention nonprofit organization that also helps communities find drowning victims.
We once met a public safety diver (PSD) instructor who insisted that it is acceptable for a fire department dive team standard to allow the first diver on the scene to enter the water without a backup and a 90-percent-ready diver on the scene, without pony bottles, without three cutting tools, and without tender-directed tethered diving with certified tenders—all because the team was in “rescue mode.”
“The victims are dead,” we said.
He said, “No, I am talking about a rescue mode.”
“Right,” we explained, “but once the victims are submerged, there are no pockets of air, so those passengers are dead. In warm water canals, the chance of victims having their lives back is less than the chance of injuring a diver in a substandard dive operation.”
Sure, there are plenty of instances in which a victim’s heart has been restarted, which makes sense because the heart is very resilient. Unfortunately, with our current medical technology, the nervous system rarely recovers. If a “save” is designated as any time a victim’s heartbeat returns instead of as a return to consciousness, then benefits may be unsafely inflated. If this happens, divers would more likely be put at unacceptable risk by their own hearts, their department, the victim’s family, and the media.
