After loading and seeing the patient off, it was back to many heat calls and other calls coming in. Then the storm came with in strong winds driving rains and two lighting strikes on the beach.
It was after the storm had passed that the dive team got called to try to recover all the umbrellas and beach chairs that had been blown in to the swimming areas up and down the beach. The dive truck was loaded up and headed down to the foot of Broadway to start the recovery effort. The chief diver and team member Rich G suited up and started at the inlet and headed south covering from 8 foot deep water out to 12 foot area. With the good visibility the divers were able to see over ten to fifteen feet making easy to see and recover anything they came across.
The team members Joe (OJ) S, Ali B and Evan S followed in 346 and came right down on the beach with the truck giving the team away to move all our equipment down the beach. Debris started coming up in minutes, whole umbrellas and beach chairs and parts of both were everywhere. One team would search and the others would come out and pick up what was recovered so the divers didn’t need to come up the beach.
The first team covered half way to the pier at Martel’s and then the other team went in and covered the water down to Martel’s pier. 24 beach umbrellas four beach chair many pairs of sun glasses and reading glasses were also recovered. With the coming darkness the team made one pass of the end of the inlet jetty to make sure that any debris would be a problem with boat traffic.
Most team members were just making home after getting all the teams gear ready for the team to return in the morning to finish search the beach’s for debris before they opened for swimmers. But after midnight a call came in for mutual aid to the Boro for a car in the Point Pleasant canal. All the same divers and Sue L returned and were ready for whatever we were need to do. But after a few hours we were released and no divers were needed to go in the water.
Sunday morning the team returned to the beaches and the inlet to finish the search for storm debris. With Both Joes, Greg, Andy, and Tommy Lee the searches were finished with many more umbrellas and beach chairs came up. Many thanks to the life guards who kept the swimmers out of the area until we could finish our sweeps and make the areas safe.
You would think that would end our busy week end, but you would be wrong a few first aid calls and as the dive duty crew was sitting down by the foot of Broadway a first aid call for a person in trouble on the jetty came in and you couldn’t have picked a more remote spot. To get the patient into the ambulances it took a team effort of the Jenks life guards, a Jenk’s guard on one of their quads two first aiders and two divers to carry the patient out to where the divers pulled down a fence to get the quad closer to the jetty and the patient. We did find out that the new 340 can go on the beach in two wheel drive.
So ended the busy week end, thanks to the many first aiders and divers who came out to answer all the calls.
