Wooden Boat Festival ~2014~

Saturday was the wooden boat festival in Toms River and as in the past the dive team was requested to come and set up our display and our touch tank. This is always a good time, we get to talk and show hundreds of kids and their parents just what is out there under the water.

   The day starts out at 0530 in the morning!  We have to do a dive to get the things we have in the touch tank. Sometimes we catch the tide and have an easy time getting everything, but this time it was low tide brown water and the tide still running out with a three to four knot current running. With OJ, big Joe, Ali and I in the water and Sue on the beach getting water and taking the specimens and keeping the ones that were the right size. We need to get fifty gallons of water to take with us so we can change the water a few times a throughout the day.

  Then we have to get back to the building clean up and load the dive truck with all the stuff we’ll need.  Like tables, chairs all the displays and the water and the specimens. Then get to Toms River Huddy Park and get all set up all by 0900.

  We almost made it! We got the tents up and the touch tank filled and most of the displays set up, but people started coming in before 0900 and it didn’t stop all day. We never got a break. There were people at the displays or the touch tank all day!

   The festival was supposed to be over at 5:00 P.M. but we still had people at the touch tank at 5:30. We have never turned kids away so we stayed until the last ones said thank you and walked away. It was a fast break down and load out! We did stop for coffee on the way home and that coffee never tasted so good!

   It is hard work and a long day, but it’s something we love to do!

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Jetty Drill 2014

As the summer season gets started the need for a coordinated response for any emergency’s happening on the jetty was full filled Thursday as the dive team held a drill for the life guards and the first aiders. This is a drill the team try’s to hold every year to keep everyone’s skills sharp.

    It starts out with going over search techniques for looking a lost person in the jacks, the jacks at the end of the jetty is a popular spot for fishermen. But people don’t know how dangerous they are. It is very slippery and many deep holes that you can fall into and not be seen from above and that is why we need to have these drills. So everyone can get use to working in a confined space.

   The life guards and the first aider’s were put in team of three and four and told to search the jacks. All the scenarios were based on past events that have happened on the jetty. One just a few years ago when two cousins came down to the jetty to see what a hurricane looked like and got washed off the jetty. They were recovered the next day using the same search techniques that were being used in today’s drill.

Prior post on the Irene Incident here...

   Once the victims were found the first aiders took over and got the victim ready to be lifted out the jacks. With the life guards and first aiders working together  the victim were put on back boards and strapped down and moved out to where they could be lifted up to the top of the jetty and moved to the ambulances.

   It’s not always easy! One victim was so well hidden that it took thirty five minutes find and recover her.

New Jersey TV-12 was also on the jetty for the drill and was able to obtain some great shots and nice footage for a News special that ran that day....

  With the victims found and the sun slowly going down it was time to end the drill. The life guards, first aiders and the dive team are ready for whatever the season brings. Hopefully we will not have to put this training to the test, but we will be ready if we have to!

Chief Dive Chet Nesley

Joint Training for Jetty Rescue with Point First-Aid and Life Guards....

TV-12 had coverage of the joint training session held with the Dive Team, Point Pleasant Beach First-Aid, and the Life Guard service. This joint training happens every year and is essential for coordinated response in this very popular area....

Video and full report here...

Jetty Training ~2014~

Sunday was the dive teams June drill and we hit the inlet jetty for more rescue work. Today it was getting down inside the jetty and searching for lost victims. If you have never looked at the jetty and the jacks at the end, you would have no idea how many holes and open spaces there are down inside the jetty. You could hide a whole baseball team down there and never see them from above. So the only way to search is to get down inside and start looking.

    The team does this drill every year with the first aid and the life guards and to keep the teams skill sharp. We have had many calls to the jetty for fishermen fall down inside and people falling from walking on the jacks and body recovery’s.

    This drill we had Lisa from the Middletown twp dive team with us along on the drill. She was down to see how we operate and how we get things done. She got to see firsthand how we got down inside the jetty and did our search, she got down inside the jetty and searched over 100 feet and never could be seen from above.

   We also did some water work after searching of the jetty. It looks to be a long season and the team needs to be ready for anything. It not even summer yet and the team has had a few call on the beach already. 

Day of Recovery...

The team got to try out some of their recovery skills on Sunday. We were asked a few weeks back to remove some sunken dock boxes out of some boat slips, which we did. We moved them into an area out of the way of any boats knowing we would be coming back for them.

Well Sunday was the day! Divers Joe (OJ) Ali, Linda with Karen and bob for surface support recovered the boxes. The water was 62 degrees, we knew we would be working so we all broke out the wet suits and that was a good call, cause after an hour and a half in the water no one was cold. The visibility was 3-5 feet right up till the time we started moving the box’s around then it was 0.
One box was over 8 feet long and the small one was 4 feet long. Joe and I started digging the box out of the mud that big Joe put the box in. I don't remember putting the box that deep in the mud. While Joe was digging Ali and Linda found the top to the long box and took it down and around the bulkhead to the boat ramp. Not an easy job as at the end of the bulkhead they were in the current that was running at over two knots.

While Joe was digging out the box’s some people in the marine who were watching us asked if we could find a pair of glass’s that were dropped off a boat a few weeks ago. I told them I would give it a try and swam over to the boat that they were dropped off. The bottom under the boat was so soft that anything dropped would be under the mud! So they should still be there. I started out doing a pass over the area staying just off the bottom so I didn’t mess up the visibility. Nothing ever goes straight down so I started there and worked out from that point searching up current and down current moving out as I went. After six passes I found them under an inch of mud. You should have seen the faces of the guy and his wife! They couldn’t believe I found them. They did ask how I did that and I told her “this is what we do!”

Once we got the boxes up on to shore we went back in the water to check out the area and see what we could find. OJ came back with a really nice round bottom bottle and Linda and Ali got some nice soda bottles. I came back with a case milk bottle and a round tape top milk bottle in pretty good shape and a brand new ten inch pipe wrench.

We started cleaning the boxes as best we could right there at the boat ramp and finished cleaning them at the building. OJ and Karen did a great job on the boxes, with a little from Bob and his power washer. All the bottles will take a little more time to clean. We did get one bottle that none from us have ever seen.

So it turned out to be a really good day, we recovered the boxes and found the lost glasses and found some nice bottles and answered some first aid calls and did our dive duty crew. Everybody did a really great job working with no visibility and a strong current and still had fun doing it!!

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Surf & Inlet Extraction Drill 2014....

Sunday was the teams drill to get ready for the upcoming summer season. It was a tune up of the teams surface rescue skills. Tom, Joe X2, Sue, Ali, Bob, Greg and Linda were suited up and ready to go. First aiders Max, Sarah, Corinne and Captain Jerry were also there as surface support.

We started out with using a rescue can as an aid for swimmers, and moved on to entry in to the water with the rescue can with both fins on and without fins. It is not always easy getting in to the water. With waves and currents it can become difficult. With some divers acting as victim and other as rescuers the divers were in and out of the water many times. Entering water and swimming out to the victim and towing the victim back in to the beach and getting the victim out of the water and into the hands of the first aiders.

   We also trained on the miller man back board. This is a piece of equipment that we have on the dive truck and all the squad’s ambulances. It is used if there is a neck or back injury. It has a lot of straps and it’s not the easiest thing to use when you can’t stand and you’re floating. So we do train using it. So if we need it to get a victim out of the water we’ll be ready.

   After a few hours of all of this we called it a day, Tom wanted to get a picture and we lined up so he could get his shot, he has us all jump up in the air and I got a great group shot of all of us in mid air.

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In the debriefing after the drill I reminded the team and the first aiders “anything can happen “so you have to be ready.

As we started back towards the building we stopped to check the inlet to see if we had any visibility so we could dive. What no one knew was I had planned to have Sue jump in to the water and play the victim. She did it so well! No one saw her jump in and it was a surprise to everyone. Linda was the first to act and was in the water in seconds holding sue afloat, she was followed by OJ, Ali, Greg and Bob. The first aiders got the miller man and passed down to the divers and working as a team had Sue strapped down and ready to be lifted out of the water in minutes. Lines were tried on the board and the first aiders had Sue up and out of the water and into the ambulance in seconds.

Photos by Tom Conroy...

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