IN Dive Rescue Team Never Tires of Training

Aug. 25 -- CHESTERFIELD, IN -- Two men in full scuba suits were searching a lake. One diver went under the opaque brown water.

The onshore operator holding his communication lines couldn’t get the diver to respond. The second diver, sitting in shallow water and throwing water over his head, leaped into action. In 67 seconds, both divers were back on shore. A third man was dressed and ready to jump in.

The Chesterfield Water Rescue team was just doing a drill, but it seemed real. Their response time was excellent, and their methods were by the book — as they should be.

A public safety water rescue team is required to do eight dives a year to remain active. Chesterfield’s team does two training sessions a month. Each session has two dives, said water rescue coordinator Cody Painter.

“You can never get enough of it,” Painter said. “We can never be overprepared.”

The Aug. 19 training at the Operators Union on Indiana 67 was overseen by Jeff Stigall, who has been an emergency rescue diver for 28 years.

The Chesterfield team is a blend of the Chesterfield Union Township Volunteer Fire Department and Chesterfield Police Department. Stigall, who has been instructing divers for years and in 22 states, said he’s never worked with a blended team.

“It’s truly one of a kind,” he said. “Having a blended team really brings an advantage.”

The team has six fully qualified divers and two shore support operators, Painter said.

Lauren Muehl, an EMT firefighter with the department, was on site for the tether course. Muehl said she doesn’t want to be a diver.

“You’re kind of completely blind underwater and I don’t think I could handle that,” she said.

Black water, the water found in Indiana lakes, only has visibility a few feet from the surface. Underneath that is a wall of murky, brown nothingness, Fire Chief Jamey Burrows said.

“People see scuba divers on TV but it’s not clear here. We aren’t in the Bahamas,” he said. “You are completely blind underwater.”

The sensory deprivation of water rescue requires systematic search techniques. The team uses a pendulum search pattern, which keeps divers on a tether and moves them in a sweeping motion, Painter said.

Painter said he doesn’t get scared underwater. Hopeful divers find out quickly if they aren’t cut out for the job.

“If you think it’s scary, you’ll get washed out during training,” he said. “You’ll come up, unable to breathe. You’ll know.”

The team always has two divers in the water: one diving, one on standby, and another person dressed at 90 percent. The “90 percenter” needs only to pull on the scuba suit and face mask to be ready to dive, Painter said.

A dive is terminated after 20 minutes. Oxygen levels are checked at the 10-, 15- and 20-minute marks, Painter said.

“It takes us 60 seconds to get dressed and ready to roll in two minutes,” he said.

The team also has a boat it uses to survey water or a vehicle from which they dive, Painter said.

The team conducts rescue and recovery dives. Rescue dives are searching for person who has gone under, recovery dives are searching for a body or an object under water.

A rescue dive occurs within the first 60 minutes of a person going underwater. Painter said if someone is pulled up within that time, they can survive.

“We call it the golden hour,” he said. “Within that hour, we can save them.”

Burrows said if he could impress one thing upon the public, it is to call 911 as soon as someone goes under, because of the golden hour.

“If a person or a car goes under, it wasn’t on purpose. Call right away,” he said. “Wear a life jacket and practice basic water safety. Safety first.”

While some dives are made to recover bodies, others are for recovering evidence. The dive team has recovered guns, money, clothes and sometimes more unusual objects, Painter said.

“The weirdest thing I ever recovered was a credit card skimmer,” Painter said. “It was completely bizarre. A nice change of pace.”

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