Multi-Agency Police Scuba Dive Team Training in Greenwich
P r e s s R e l e a s e
Contact: Lt Kraig Gray
Email: kraig.gray@greenwichct.org
Phone:(203)622-8044
Multi-Agency Police Scuba Dive Team Training
With the approval of a Federal Port Security Grant, the Greenwich Police Department is hosting several Regional Dive Team Training courses this week.
These courses focus on creating a foundation for training as a regional unit between police, fire and other public safety dive teams in the Region 1 ESF-20 Bridgeport Area Marine Group.
This advanced training is being participated by public safety divers from the Greenwich Police Department, the Milford Police Department, the Westport Police Department, Westport Emergency Medical Services, the Stamford Fire Department and the Connecticut State Police.
Public safety diving is specific work conducted by law enforcement, fire departments and search and recovery dive teams. Public safety diving is very different than recreational diving in many respects. Unlike recreational divers who plan their dives in advance and rarely “work” underwater, public safety dive teams must dive and work effectively in conditions frequently not suitable for recreational divers.
The training is being taught by Ed Hayes of Scuba Shack ,LLC which is the only Global Underwater Explorers (GUE) training facility in the Northeast. The GUE classes, along with their instructors have a set of standards and training methods much higher than the norm of any of the current available training in the scuba world. They offer classes and curriculum that other agencies do not and cannot offer. There are currently only nineteen instructors for GUE in the United States and the standards and training to become one is the highest in the underwater realm. The dive environments that our public safety dive teams encounter are amongst some of the harshest conditions and usually where some bad event has already occurred. GUE and their classes have evolved from the most difficult diving in the world, technical cave diving. With this development have come the most advanced techniques in propulsion, buoyancy control, team protocols and equipment configurations ever seen in diving.
With a limited number of dive teams in our region and each team having different levels of training for their specific departments, standardized training becomes a critical layer in the region’s ability to respond to any incident. Multi-agency responses during major events, manmade or natural, require the different dive teams to work together in a coordinated effort to provide the best opportunity to mitigate waterborne incidents. With the training we are currently receiving we are one step closer to that goal.
Any further question should be directed to: Marine Officer Tom Etense at (203) 622-8044