Public Safety Diver Training
Prerequisite Training
PADI, like most agencies, requires divers to have a foundation of dive training and experience prior to becoming Public Safety Divers and engaging in the more challenging conditions Public Safety Divers confront. These foundation courses are:
Open Water Diver
This course is the starting point for Public Safety Divers. You’ll learn the beginning skills and knowledge to plan and conduct a recreational SCUBA dive.
Advanced Open Water
The advanced open water class gives you an opportunity to expand your diving skills by focusing on five different adventure dives. Two of these dives will teach you about diving deeper than 60 feet and about underwater navigation. The three remaining dives can be picked from a large list of topics, but I usually recommend full face mask, dry suit and search and recovery for students training to be Public Safety Divers. This course can be completed in as little as two days. Once completed, an open water diver’s depth limit goes from 60 feet to 130 feet after gaining some additional deeper diving experience.
Rescue Diver
Sometimes described as the hardest class you’ll ever love…the rescue diver course teaches you to prepare for problems, identify little issues that could leader to bigger ones, and assist others in need. You’ll learn the best ways to approach divers in distress and how to address many of the more common conditions associated with scuba diving. This is an important class for Public Safety Divers because it gives them a greater depth of knowledge regarding dive emergencies, especially needed when the conditions are challenging.
Public Safety Diver Certification
This is a three day course that begins with eight hours of classroom and land drills to establish the basics of Public Safety Diving. Day two takes us to the water to learn and perform skills needed by Public Safety Divers, such as; search patterns, shore to diver communication, entanglements and more. Everything is put together in the final day as the class responds to scenarios as a team, and is evaluated on team approach, safety, search technique, search completion, and a diver emergency situation. This certification satisfies a team member’s need for training to be a member of a Public Safety Dive Team.
Public Safety Dive Team Leader
Dive teams continue to be created and developed in many of the local areas. There are many common practices that give guidance and are considered standards to increase the safety of an inherently dangerous activity. This eight-hour class brings dive team leaders together to review these practices and share struggles and successes with running a dive team.
Underwater Evidence Recovery
The time of pulling a gun off the bottom of a small lake and handing it to someone on shore is in the past. Dive teams need to be professional in their efforts to preserve the value of evidence they recover. Scene management, diagrams, measurements, proper evidence handling and advanced techniques are some of the topics that are discussed in this class.
Full Face Mask
Full face masks are the standard with Public Safety Dive Teams because they help protect the diver from water borne contaminants. Many dive teams have them but not all divers are as confident as they should be with their full face masks. In this class we look at several types of full face masks, learn how they function, we evaluate fit, comfort and clearing, and build confidence through technique and repetition.
Dry Suit Diver
A well equipped dry suit helps keep a public safety diver protected from water borne contaminants. This course goes over dry suit features, use and maintenance. divers learn how to properly weight themselves and dive the suit so it works for them and not against them.
Ice Diver
Diving under the ice and in freezing water creates many safety, equipment and logistical concerns. This ice diving certification focuses on ice diving from a Public Safety Diver’s point of view.
Deep Diver
The need to plan for diving deep may depend on how deep the bodies of water are in your service area. Water deeper than 60 is usually defined as recreational “deep diving”. Deep diving brings in several logistical factors for public safety dive teams. Rope search patterns are affected, tank air duration is significantly reduced, narcosis increases, safety stops should be implemented, the potential of decompression sickness rises, and barotrauma becomes more concerning.
Search and Recovery
This class expands search and recovery beyond the usual arc search pattern and rope drills. Divers learn about and practice some of the other search patters available to divers and evaluate their strengths and weaknesses. Having a greater depth of knowledge in search and recovery makes the public safety professional more flexible in their ability to handle challenging situations.
Ongoing Public Safety Dive Team Training
Providing innovative and challenging dive team training can be difficult for the team leader or training coordinator. As an instructor that focuses on dive training and works with several dive teams, I have the opportunity to see new and varied techniques that help round out a teams skill set. I have a varied supply of training props to make the training more realistic and valuable to the team members involved in the training.