[ad_1]

Sheriff Dave Kramer recently wrote a request and was awarded a grant through the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway Foundation for $19,300 for the specific purpose of getting proper diving safety equipment for the divers from the Sheriff’s Office and Boundary Search and Dive Rescue.

The funding will be used to update and outfit divers with appropriate safety gear for dive rescue, including underwater communications gear now lacking.

In the early 1980s, Sheriff Dave Kramer and Bonners Ferry Police Chief Brian Zimmerman, both early in what became illustrious law enforcement careers, talked about the eye-opening experience after they made their first dive into the Kootenai River, where the current is strong, and recognized a need in Boundary County, with the river and all the lakes, to have trained divers ready to respond to water emergencies.

They became two of the founders of the dive rescue team for Boundary County.

Boundary Dive Rescue eventually joined with Boundary Search and Rescue to become what it is today, Boundary Search and Dive Rescue.

Sheriff Kramer has been a diver on the team since its inception.

“I am extremely excited to see the next generation of dive rescue professionals and the level that the team has been building up to,” he said.

The divers with the Sheriff’s Office and Search and Rescue have been working hard to build up the skills and equipment necessary for the challenging types of conditions encountered in Boundary County waters.

The dive team is often faced with very limited visibility, currents, night dives, ice dives, searches and working around underwater obstacles and underwater crime scene investigations.

Currently the divers have different levels of experience and the goal is to bring all of the divers up to standards needed to safely be a public safety diver and the appropriate equipment.

Search and Dive Rescue divers Caleb Watts and Levi Falck have been working hard at building the dive team and water response capabilities, arranging training and working with the divers to make sure that we have a fully trained team, which currently includes five divers from the Sheriff’s Office and about the same with Search and Dive Rescue, all working together.

“Although the last couple of months have been extremely hard on everyone with the stay-at-home order, we are still working and training as hard as we can to bring the very best service to our community,” Watts said.

Jake Pawlison, Jake’s Scuba Adventures, Coeur d’Alene, has been working with the team and providing training to the group for certifications.

“Proper rescue diving is the right equipment and training, and there is a world of difference between recreational diving and public safety diving,” he said. “The difference is night and day.”

Reserve Sheriff’s Deputy Scott Browne is also a certified dive instructor who voluntarily works in training the divers, as well as to assist Detective Caleb Watts on marine patrols on the river throughout the year.

Sheriff Kramer and all of the rescue divers are very grateful to the dedication and commitment that Pawlison and Browne provide to the divers to help improve their skills with the end goal of keeping them safe and able to do the job that needs to be done.

With the generous donations from BNSF Railway Foundation and an earlier donation from 9B Foundation and the Mclowski estate, the divers have been able to obtain proper equipment which includes drysuits, tanks, dive computers and regulators, full face masks with diver to diver and diver to surface communications, along with specialized training courses.

The divers with the Sheriff’s Office and Search and Rescue will be joining the Kootenai County and Spokane County Dive Teams for training in July, completing the Public Safety Diver course.

Let’s block ads! (Why?)

[ad_2]

Source link