Dive rescue and recovery is a very specialized form of technical rescue. Due to the cost of equipment and the time required by divers to maintain proficiency in their skills, many dive teams in our area have gone by the wayside. Denison Fire has one of only a handful of remaining active dive teams in the west central part of Iowa. Over the last few years we have been requested to assist all over the western part of Iowa. We have responded to calls in, Storm Lake, Carroll County, Mason City, Story County, Lake City, and Lake View just to name a few. Without a dive team in Denison, the next closest capable dive team would be the Story County or Okoboji teams.

Denison Fire Department SCUBA divers last updated their dive equipment in 2002. In 2015 the dive team was requested and participated in 3 recovery events. To date this year, the dive team has participated in one recovery that happened to be in Crawford County. When responding and participating in these last two years of calls for assistance, our members have noticed that our equipment was in need of updating. At the recent dive recovery in Dow City, we were only able to fully outfit one diver who worked with a diver from Carroll to make the recovery.

With this in mind the Dive Team has put together a three year plan of identifying immediate personnel protective equipment needs for the divers and tenders.

At this time department members have authorized the purchase of approximately $7,500 of equipment that is an immediate needs replacement. This initial purchase of equipment will include: full face masks, technical BCD's and Cold water regulators. All of the equipment will be public safety rated where warranted.

 The full face masks would allow for future modifications including allowing divers to maintain two air sources and communications between divers and support teams. Live radio communications will help to improve safety for our divers, as they are able to voice their emergencies live to the backup divers and support personnel. It has become an essential piece of equipment for allowing surface personnel to direct divers via to the victim.

 The technical control devices are replacing outdated and worn out sport BCD’s with technical, public safety rated BCD’s. This is going to allow our divers to have greater integration capabilities, and a greater lift capacity. With public safety divers, larger amounts of weight are needed to maintain a negative buoyancy and maintain firmly on the bottom. Larger lift capacities will help in the recovery of a victim from the bottom of a lake or pond to the surface. Technical BCD’s are also much more serviceable and hardily built then common sport BCD’s. With a sport BCD if it is broken or torn they must be removed from service and are unrepairable. Technical BCD’s are able to be repaired rapidly and are built to withstand the rigors of .

 Cold water regulators are environmentally sealed and allow for exposure to harsher environments. Our regulators are not designed to take on the cold water environments that we are exposed to. A sport regulator is designed for water 50 degrees or higher. Many of Iowa’s lakes and waterways can easily reach low 40’s to 30’s at the bottom. With non-cold water regulators you run the risk to freezing up a regulator causing a diver to lose air while on the bottom. We have found it to be impossible in the past few years to get our regulators serviced and we are starting to experience regulator failures.

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Our next step is where we would like to purchase with public donations is a Sonar system. An estimated cost of the Sonar system is $4,000. Anytime we can eliminate water time for public safety divers, we can eliminate risk of injuring or losing a diver and an increased operational safety factor.

Sonar has become the backbone of dive rescue and recovery over the past ten years. Up until just a few years ago recovering of bodies and objects such as vehicles was a lengthy process that could last up to several days. It would also require the assistance of several dive teams from upwards of 100 miles away.

Prior to sonar, team leaders would establish report with the witnesses and interview each of them separately and piece together the events, for a possible location of a victim. During the first sixty minutes of any water call is the rescue period, where divers make a rapid attempt to locate the victim while they are still viable for resuscitation. After the sixty-minute period recovery efforts cease while witness’s statements are put together to determine a location of the victim. After the area of interest is identified boats are sent onto the water to setup a grid underwater so that search patterns can begin. Setting up a grid can take up to an hour depending on the depth of water and location from the shore. After the grid is set, divers are grouped and sent underwater to do blind sweeps along the grid using what we call the rake.

The rake is piece of equipment that attaches to the grid lines underwater to guide divers along a search path. Divers’ line up side by side underwater and work down and back along the grid lines hoping to inadvertently bump into the victim in order to recover them. As anyone can imagine this is a lengthy process that involves many unforeseen dangers for public safety divers.

Due to the nature of water conditions in the mid-west, visibility is almost always absolute zero. Many divers will describe the water they are diving in as the darkest dark imaginable. With no visibility it leaves our divers at risk of running out of air as they cannot visualize their gauges in such environments. It also exposes them to great dangers with unknown objects on the bottom of many lakes. Divers can become easily entangled in old trees, fishing line, nets, pallets set for fish habitats, and the list goes on.

With sonar we are able to eliminate hours of unnecessary water time for our divers. Sonar units can be deployed very quickly upon arrival at a recovery location. The abilities of sonar units on the market today, allow searchers to visualize large amounts of area in only minutes, to locate the victim and also see what are present for our divers.

The Sonar unit we are hoping to purchase features a large area sweep while the boat is moving and then once the victim is located there is a different mode referred to as "360 degrees". In the 360 mode the boat is able to be anchored in a fixed position while it continues sonar imaging. This will allow us to pinpoint a victim’s location without risk to a diver from a boat running above their heads. 360 degree mode has the ability to focus on a small area of interest and watch divers as they make their approach to the victim, allowing personnel on the boat to direct them within a few feet of the victim. Along with the Sonar DVFD members would like to find a 16 to 18 foot flat bottom boat, trailer and motor. We are looking at state and federal surplus for the boat.

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In the next two years we need to find funding to upgrade our wet suits to Dry Suits, purchase communications systems, purchase backup air sources which will cost approximately $13,000 per year.

will allow divers to be sealed off from the water environments completely. In the past few years we have seen a major increase in algae bloom around the state. Algae blooms are dangerous to animal and human life and result in several major hospital admissions and even deaths throughout the Midwest area each year. Currently our do not protect against contaminates that we are likely to encounter. Dry suits will also allow our divers to make recoveries in much harsher weather and water environments. Currently we only have two divers with dry suits that would be able to recover a victim in an ice situation. A dry suit also keeps diver’s warmer allowing them to conserve energy and be more productive for repetitive dives.

 Communications systems will allow divers to communicate with other divers, Sonar operators and tenders or diver support personnel.

 Backup air sources are intended as an emergency air system in the event the divers’ primary supply malfunctions or simply depilated.

Approximate costs for public safety rated personal protective equipment

Full Face Mask with communication-$2,365.00 Technical BCD-$650.00 Dry Suit- $1,600.00 Technical Regulator-$200.00 Backup air source-$600.00 Miscellaneous-$400.00 (ie. , Gloves, Gauges…) Scuba Tank-$300

Shore Line and Boat items

Sonar with 360- $4,000.00 Surface communications- $5,000.00 Boat-Price to be determined

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