Journey of 540 Dives

This post goes out to the dedicated and hard working men of ALERT's Unit 51. 

I have been on the road for most of April in the great state of Texas, teaching at the International ALERT Academy.

This is one of the twice-a-year moments that I get to teach there, and it is hands down my favorite group to teach.

We cover a LOT in a very short amount of time! In just 14 days, these young men are taken from not being very confident in the water to open water, advanced open water, and then through the special response diving course. Like I said, a LOT!

There are a few reasons why I enjoy this.

1. These guys are beast. Like Nike, they just do it. No reservations or holding back when they are told to do something- they just get it done.
2. Big, giant, human shaped sponges. All of them are eager to learn and grow. 
3. Competent. It's not like they just learned to dive in the ocean and now they won't dive for another year. No.. in just these two weeks they put 20 dives under their weight belts. Most people learning to dive won't even do that many dives in a year!
4. Let's not leave out comical. It's not perfection all the time, and there are a lot of screw ups, but we have fun doing it! The difference is that these guys are willing to learn from their mistakes.

These are only a few of the many reasons I enjoy working with ALERT men. I'm also an Alumni of the Academy, so there's that...

There is one thing that stands out the most, however, among these young men. It's their desire to go out and do. They have a fire lit inside to take the skills that they learn and go and serve their communities and public safety departments. And that's exactly what we need. We need the next generation of public safety divers to get excited to take on the job that is there.

An interesting shift is going on in the public safety diving world right now. It's the shift from the experienced old salts to the young bucks. Those that have been in the world of Underwater Search & Recovery and have been successful in their craft are either moving up their respective ladders, or they are retiring. The massive amounts of knowledge and wisdom that comes only from experience also leaves with them. This is leaving a learning gap in many departments. The old is out and the new is lost and left to find help and training on their own; which often means poor training.

But it's this fresh batch, the newbies, the rookies, the ones with that drive to get it done, that make my job a joy to do. I look forward to the future of these ALERT men and the impact they will have on their communities. Keep up the good work guys!

If you want to find out more about ALERT click HERE!
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The rise of technology, and the fall of common sense.

We got the call at about 9:30 AM. We loaded up, headed out, and arrived at a small lake that was nestled in the middle of a highway interchange. We were informed by Florida Highway Patrol that the incident had happened the night before, when a person driving a pickup truck, had lost control and driven off the interstate and gone into this lake. The driver had gotten out and was fine, but the truck was now making friends with the fishes.

I geared up and walked to the waters edge as my partner got the search line. We could see the tire tracks where the vehicle had gone in, and so using that as our LSP (Last Seen Point) we started an arc search. About 10 minutes later I located the vehicle that was, in fact, a pickup truck. It was just sitting there on all four wheels glistening in the early morning sun, about 120 feet from shore.

Well, to make this story short so I can talk on what this post is really about; we recovered the truck and all was good. But when I had come up after locating the truck, the wrecker operator was just laughing and shaking his head. He told us about a recovery he was at a few days before, where 6 off duty police officers had spent 6 hours using side scan sonar, looking for a 20 foot box truck in a 50 foot wide canal that was only 20 feet deep. He just laughed and said, "It took them 6 hours with all those guys and technology, and you two come out here, and in 10 minutes, find a pickup in a 40 foot lake with a piece of string!"


Does the title make sense now? You see where I'm going with this? Dive teams get sold on all kinds of new gadgets and gear, and pay for it by trading in there knowledge of the basic principles of Public Safety Diving. A sad side note: the amount of money these teams try to get to buy said gadgets, is money that could be used for upgrading basic equipment, or be used to pay for additional training days.
Give me money to pay a team some overtime to train with the basics, and I'll give you better results then any piece of technology can produce. You think that's a bold statement? Let's take a look at a recent event in New Orleans.

I have a few things I would like to point out. First, is the amount of people who had been involved in the search. Multiple departments and volunteers assisted in looking for this missing teacher. The State Rep. in the video says that the area had been searched before but the vehicle had been missed. Now whether that was with side scan sonar or with search patterns I don't know.
Second, is the relative closeness to shore where they located the missing teachers vehicle.
Third, there were a lot of other vehicle recovered! This tells me that they do not go into these areas regularly.

As I researched this story, I kept asking one question. Why was that car missed? If divers had been in there and they were proficient at their search patterns, why was that car not located?

We have to be careful that we are not sold into the thinking that big expensive toys make it all easier, or even more effective. You can only have one of two answers. I located the object, or the object was not in the search area. Are your search methods ingrained into your team so well that you can confidently give one of those two answers? Or do you have doubt when you get done with a search?

I'm not some stone age diver that thinks that technology will take over the world. I think that there some applications where side scan sonar is very useful. Heck, I was interviewed on the Nancy Grace Show one time about the use of side scan sonar in an investigation. In that investigation it was very helpful in locating the missing person. Things like side scan sonar and metal detectors can definitely be useful tools to assist your team, but I believe that you need to know and be able to perform effectively, the basic search patterns first!

So what I'm really trying to say is: Don't sell your common sense to buy technology. That's my point. Ok, I'm done.

Search negatively my friends!

The Importance Of Uniformity

In my world there is nothing worst than looking like an incompetent newbie. Anyone who has been in the Public Safety Diving business for any amount of time, knows what I'm talking about. Showing up to a callout and suddenly everyone on the team looks like it's their first time suiting up. It looks bad and is embarrassing.  Not what you want, especially when the media or other agencies are around.

So why does this happen? Mainly because dive teams don't take uniformity to an all encompassing level. The only thing that should be uniform is our training and t-shirts, right? Wrong. Every detail of your team and it's equipment needs to be the same.

This is something my team takes seriously. We have everything the same right down to the compass and

where it's kept on the BC. Each item was picked because of it's functionality and ease of use. In the real world things go wrong. Regs free flow and BC's auto inflate, and It's really nice to be able to grab another guys setup and go! You should not have to think about where their light is or how his BC works. You have a job to do.

The only thing I allow my guys to have of their own is a wetsuit, mask, and fins. Even then, we train in the other guys fins just in case.

When doing search patterns it is also good to be uniform in how you do them. Hold the line the same way. If your tending, you should all stand the same way. In doing this there is no question in what is going on with the other team members. You can also step in for someone and not lose the momentum of your operation.

I'm going to drop a truth bomb on you. If you don't know your team, and I mean really know them. You will not function as a team. Profound I know. This sounds like a no-brainer  but is often overlooked within Police and Fire Departments. They have guys who are "on the dive team" but are regular patrol and only get called if they are really needed. Do they even know who they are diving with? Who is that guy up there tending me?

So take a moment and ask yourself what you and your team can improve on. What can you make more streamlined?

People say that all publicity is good publicity. Being the incompetent newbie on the five o'clock is not what they mean...trust me.

Jump in! The water is like pea soup!

The other day I was talking with a police diver and his team, who had come to Miami to train with another department. The team was from Louisiana and most of their missions are around lake Pontchartrain. The team leader was commenting on how happy he was to be able to get his guys down here to train where there was visibility.

I would like to make 2 observations on this matter.

#1 - After the team leader made this comment, he continued in saying that all they have to train in back home, is dirty water that you can't see anything in. I was thinking GREAT! That's exactly what you should be training in, because that's real world Public Safety Diving!
Now I do understand that you need to be able to see to learn certain skills. Skills like using lift bags. Learn in a controlled environment so you have that muscle memory when you really can't see. I get it.

But is it necessary to travel 20 hours to find those locations? Absolutely not. Many divers think that going

back to the swimming pool is for newbies. For those open water wanna-be's who are not yet worthy for real diving in that big dangerous ocean. Well their wrong. You might be able to find great, deep, pools at your local collage. Look for ones with a diving team. They usually have a diving well that's 16 feet deep; more than suitable for learning the basics of lift bags. And while your there, work on some other skills that will push your ability's as well as your teams. It's not about the pool, but what you do in it.
This also gives a team leader the ability to evaluate how their divers dive. Do they have neutral buoyancy? do they actually know how to kick? Do they actually know how to tie that knot, or do they just say they do? Sometimes it's good to go back to the basics to learn the hard stuff.

#2 -  What is visibility? The National Academy of Police Diving describes visibility like this:

• Zero Visibility: The inability to visually observe any object at any distance from the faceplate of the mask.
• Low Visibility: The inability to visually observe an object beyond the diver's outstretched hand.
• Black Water: The inability to visually observe an object because of the lack of light penetration.

Using the above terms, what kind of diving does your department have to deal with? If you have to learn in a pool first that's fine; but nothing can replace the confidence and skill that comes from performing in the real thing.

I would love to hear what you think on this and any stories you might have from training, so leave a comment!