Even with living in central Virginia and almost 400 miles from the Manasquan Inlet and the Point Pleasant Beach area of central New Jersey, I still get sent e-mails of team functions as well as calls to duty when incidents occur. This just happened a few days ago when Team Captain Chet Nesley sent out the call after it was reported a body was seen floating in the hurricane Irene swells that were running the length of the Manasquan Inlet. Point Pleasant Rescue Dive Team members rolled out and responded to the Inlet that was still taking a pounding from Irene that was still coming up the coast and dropping substantial amounts of rain along with hurricane force winds. Upon arrival team members discovered a body floating near the "Jacks" of the Manasquan Inlet and attempt was made to retrieve the lifeless body but a 7 to 10 foot rolling wave came down the inlet separating Chief Nesley who was 6 to 8 feet from the body that was then washed into the "Jacks"...
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The above photo shows Chief Nesley among the massive concrete jacks searching for the missing body that he was separated from a short time ago. Unfortunately the body could not be located and retrieved that night and was retrieved along with another victim the next day...
Several local news services covered this story and can be found here:
Here and Here.....
While sitting in Virginia and following developments of this incident by way of Internet reports, emails, Facebook postings, and telephone calls, I started work on the initial post for this site with some background research of prior incident response and training sessions at the Manasquan Inlet and the Jacks then being searched. This Rescue Dive\Scuba team is not like many teams that are part of local Fire department or First-Aid teams across the country. This team has been known to be out in and seen training in many diverse conditions practicing and improving their skills. Many of these training missions can be seen here and they have obviously paid off as evident of the posture and actions of this team of dedicated members...
Many years ago while working on my PADI Rescue certification as well as eventual PADI Divemaster certification, it was evident that this training was not of the "basic" variety that I fear many divers have been cheated with by dive shops and Instructors who were more interested in moving students thru the system as fast as possible and greatest profit margin. This I compare with the resort training that I saw while living in the Florida Keys where divers could get their Rescue certification in a weekend and learned many of the skills at the dock with 2 to 4" waves usually created by passing boats. In comparison the training that I was fortunate to receive was over a 5 to 6 week period with many sessions spent in often rough Jersey surf and follow-up debriefing sessions athe the local 7-eleven...
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1 comment:
Always great to see what other PSD teams are up to. Be safe always!!
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