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Long-time program at WIU trains divers for search, rescue and more

MACOMB – Students of the Western Illinois University Scuba diving program recently trained as rescue and safety divers in an unlikely place: the middle of midwestern rural America.
“We take people from absolutely no diving experience all the way through instructor if they choose to go that far. Mostly, the main goal of our program is to create working divers,” Dan Walter, director of the Scuba diving program at WIU, said in a recent interview.
The applications and careers involving Scuba are many. “There are so many different careers out there in the real world that Scuba diving is a part of – our mission, our goal, is to get people ready to do it, accept those jobs and get hired to those jobs so they can start their career,” he said.
As part of their training as future Scuba rescue and safety divers, students benefit from both classroom instruction and from the experience of actually diving into bodies of water during the icy winter season.
As part of their training, Walter recently took a group of his Scuba diving students on excursion to a body of water located near Media, Ill. on Saturday, Feb 9.
He said his students are trained to experience what diving is like, how to do it correctly and how to be ready to dive in case it ever becomes necessary to respond to a call.
Walter outlined the preparation leading up to the time when students are taken off-campus to train. “We sit in the classroom and we work in the (Brophy Hall) pool to get ready to this for several weeks. We talk specifically about how we are going to create the hole (in the ice), and why we create it the shape that we do,” he said.
The class uses tethered-diving to help divers navigate under the water and find the “hole at the end of the dive,” he said, “because if you can’t find the hole, you’re not getting out (of the ice-covered water.”
In tethered diving,  students under the ice are tied to a person that is on the surface. The tether is is their lifeline and communication line. Students and instructors communicate with each other through that tethered line using line pulls.
“If there is any problem, there is a ‘pull me out now’ signal we have had to use in past years. We did not have to use it use it on Saturday at the lake in Media,” Walter said.
After arriving at the lake, a spot was chosen to cut the hole into the ice using a chainsaw. Previous classes have sunk various items under the ice while they Scuba dive in order to observe what they look like. Walter said that an equilateral triangle was cut into the ice in order to make entering and exiting the water easier for students because that type of triangle has nice, sharp corners and the sides are closer together than other shapes.
“Students can swim up into the corner of a triangle, push up and roll out onto the ice. If you’re in a square that sort of works, but it is not as good as a triangle. If you’re in a circular hole, forget it; you’re not getting out, Walter said.
Uses for Scuba, and equipment
“We have a lot of law enforcement and fire science students who want to be on dive rescue teams. One of the main things that those teams do is go rescue under ice and in cold water, and effect rescues and recoveries.”
Walter described the gear and equipment that Scuba divers use. Scuba is an acronym that stands for self-contained underwater breathing apparatus. “That means the tank and the regulator that allows you to use a little bit of the air in the tank at a time so you don’t hurt yourself,” he said.
In addition to the rebreather (regulator) and the air tank, divers wear a vest called a buoyancy compensator which holds the tank to a person’s body and allows them to change buoyancy.
“So, you need some kind of thermal protection to survive ice diving. You need all of these functioning things like a mask so you can see, flippers so you can kick and then you need a suit, whether a dry or wetsuit,” he said.
“So, training people to do that here at WIU gets them ready to do it in the real world, and because no one else is doing at a university level, my students are getting jobs before anyone else,” Walter said.
Traveling away from home to attend a university for Scuba training in such close proximity to hundreds of miles of corn fields in a rural area of the state may seem unlikely for some students, but Walter explained the program has been going on for decades.
“Scuba diving has literally been going on at WIU since the early 1960s. (The program) started because a person who was teaching at WIU at that time was interested in Scuba in the department that it seemed to fit in, and he got it going,” Walter said.
Since coming to WIU in 1998, Walter took on the responsibility as Scuba instructor and developed the program further. “We created a minor degree in Scuba diving where people don’t just learn to blow bubbles in the water and have a good time on vacation. Students are learning to use Scuba as a tool in their career,” he said.
Students who receive Scuba training at WIU often use the skills they have learned as a tool in their careers. For example, Walter said that there are people across the globe with careers in marine science, search and recovery, instructing, driving dive boats and being dive safety officers.
The McDonough County Sheriff’s Department sponsored a dive-rescue team for many years, he said, and that team was responsible to go out and effect rescues in bodies of water.
The county later chose to disband the team, but despite the lack of support, Walter said that a group of his students decided to keep the team going, just on their own. “They fund it, they train, they get ready to go and if they are needed they are standing by to go out and do the same thing they did when the sheriff’s department used to have the program,” he said.
“Most people have never heard of that, and can’t believe it when they do hear it because who does that? Well, these people find it very useful for their training, their resume, for the experience to go through the training to be ready to go.”
“They have not been called out too often since the official team was disbanded, but they have been out on a couple of minor calls. So, we hope that if somebody needs that type of help they will get in touch with my group and employ their expertise.”

Reach Christopher Ginn by email at chrisginn1978@gmail.com

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