EAGLE'S NEST PUBLIC SAFETY DIVER PROGRAM - 12/5/1999

Continuing in the IANTD tradition of diver education, we are now offering a Public Safety Diver (PSD) Education Program.

The purpose of the IANTD Public Safety Diver course is to give divers the basic skills, knowledge, planning, organization, techniques and hazards of this type of diving, and develop the students understanding of the team concept to work with Fire Departments, Rescue Squads and Law Enforcement.

For Public Safety Divers, the call for help can come at any time. Most Public Safety Diving operations involve recoveries of a body, vehicle, plane, or gathering evidence from a crime or accident. The process of recovering objects or missing persons starts as soon as the call for help is received and involves many special skills which include: dive team organization, leadership and special training.

Because of extreme environmental conditions in various regions, it has been recognized that the local dive teams have had to call on outside assistance because they were not properly trained to handle these conditions.

The leading cause of PSD accidents was the lack of proper training, which led to the diver being unable to solve basic problems.

In an effort to curb these incidents, we have developed a Public Safety Diving curriculum to properly train and prepare divers for the challenges of Public Safety Diving. Combined with Nitrox, Advanced Nitrox, Technical Nitrox, Trimix, or Overhead Environmental Training, dive teams can now handle assignments only military or commercial divers were capable of at one time.

For more information, please contact Larry Green at (904) 497-3494 or e-mail him at Lgreen@atlantic.net. Larry is ITT #21 with IANTD, and also an Instructor Trainer with TDI. He is an active cave instructor with the NSS-CDS and NACD, and also serves on both training committees for these agencies.