Fire Department Water Rescue | Stillwater, Swiftwater, Ice Rescue & Beyond: Alec Shogan

Episode Description:
In this episode, Eric Linnenburger dives into the world of water rescue with Alec Shogan, a fire medic and water rescue coordinator, highlighting the unique challenges and advancements within the fire service's water rescue programs. Discover how a small department like the Westminster Fire Department manages specialized operations like swift water, ice rescue, and even wildfire responses using boats and cutting-edge technology.

#FireService #WaterRescue #SwiftWater #IceRescue #Firefighter

Key Topics:
-Westminster Fire Department's water rescue evolution and rebranding from "dive team" to "water rescue team"

-Alec's background in diving and what drew him to the water rescue specialty

-How regional collaboration enhances water rescue capabilities across agencies

-The importance of specialized water rescue skills in a landlocked state like Colorado

-Swift water rescue techniques: search patterns, rope systems, and safety protocols

-Unique equipment: boats, sonar, underwater ROV, new dive truck, and communications technology

-Structured training requirements, certifications, and volunteer pathways to join the team

-Water rescue responses for lakes, swift water, and flood emergencies

-Recent wildfire deployment supporting wildland firefighting efforts via boats

-How agencies can develop water rescue programs and get started

Timestamps:
00:00 - Introduction to the water rescue team and Alec's background
02:18 - Alec's career path and influence of a key mentor
03:39 - The evolution of Westminster's water rescue program
06:02 - Why being a "water guy" attracted Alec to the fire service
07:25 - Regionalization and inter-agency collaboration in water rescue
08:18 - Water rescue in landlocked Colorado: risks and water bodies
10:55 - Swift water rescue: search techniques, hazards, and resource needs
12:24 - Rope systems, technical rescue, and incident management
15:54 - Training expectations, certifications, and volunteer involvement
19:00 - Essential equipment: boats, sonar, dive truck, and underwater ROV
22:38 - From the bread truck to advanced technology
26:54 - Water rescue for lakes and floodwaters during wildfire season
32:38 - Managing cold water rescues and the 90-minute rescue window
34:39 - Tech innovations: sonar, underwater robots, dive computers
38:56 - Supporting law enforcement recovery and cold case searches
41:54 - Wildfire deployment: supporting wildland firefighting with boats 
45:58 - The importance of boat experience and cross-training
46:35 - Motivating others to pursue water rescue as a specialized skill
50:02 - Multi-agency collaboration and training efforts
52:20 - How to get involved and the importance of certified swimming skills

Contact:
opstalk.wfd@gmail.com  

Eric Linnenburger
linkedin.com/in/eric-linnenburger
elinnenb@westminsterco.gov

Alec Shogan
ashogan@westminsterco.gov

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:05

At the end of the day, anytime we submerge in the water, we are immediately entering an ideal H environment. And so we need to make sure that we're we're giving it the same level of attention that we would a structure fire, because you know, we still talk about those as high risk, low frequency events. Like these are comparably high risk, if not sometimes I would argue higher, because at least in the uh in the structure environment, you've got a window to bail out of. Um there's no windows underwater. Uh things go sideways.

SPEAKER_00 0:40

Welcome to Ops Talk, Westminster Fire Department's operational training podcast, where we share ideas and knowledge through honest conversations, highlighting the people who do the work. I'm Eric Linenberger, Deputy Chief of Operations. While built as a resource for our members, we invite the Greater Fire Service and the community to be part of the conversation. What we share reflects our current approach under present conditions. Always follow your department's procedures and guidelines. Welcome to the Ops Talk Podcast. I'm your host, Derek Linenberger. Today we're doing another special team profile. We're pulling back the curtain on our water rescue team. My guest is Alec Shogun, a fire medic with the Westminster Fire Department and coordinator of the regional water rescue team. Alec is a Colorado native who started in the fire service as a volunteer with Boulder Rural Fire, where he served for five years before beginning his career with the WFD eight years ago. He's been on the water rescue team for seven of those years and has served as a team coordinator for the last two. He's also husband to his wife Felicia and a dog dad to their three fur monsters. Alec is as good as it gets. He's the type of guy that doesn't just clock in and clock out. He's motivated, he's engaged, he makes everyone around him better. The guy is just super involved, makes me feel really good about where the fire service is headed. Before we get started, I just have one ask. If you're finding value in what we're doing, please take a moment, like, subscribe, comment, and share the show with others. It really does help get this content to the people that can use it. All right, let's get into it. Alex Shogun, welcome to the show. Chief, thanks for having me. Appreciate you. What did I miss there? I know I missed a lot because you are involved in so many things, and we're going to get into that today. But what else did I miss that you might want to share? Let's see here.

SPEAKER_01 2:31

I don't know. That was very complimentary. This was quite nice. But yeah, I mean, spend uh spend a lot of time working with our EMS division, handle a lot of our uh life pack upgrades and that kind of stuff. Back out a couple apparatus as we talked about working on those new medic units uh that we've got coming in here shortly. So it's kind of a majority uh majority of the projects that I deal with.

SPEAKER_00 2:54

Yeah, you're a you're a medic working on one of our busiest companies. You're also an acting officer, and you just basically led the team specing out a whole fleet changeover worth of medic units, which is a big deal. We're gonna talk about our our dive truck project. You just spec that vehicle and and put that vehicle in service. You're so involved, and and and I want to highlight that a little bit as we go, but man, appreciate the work you do and um just so so impressive. Well, thank you.

SPEAKER_01 3:30

Yeah, it's uh it's a fun time. I enjoy a lot of these projects, and it's been it's been great thus far. I'll just keep tracking.

SPEAKER_00 3:38

What uh what brought you here? What brought you to this fire service career? You're still pretty young in your career.

unknown 3:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:46

Uh it's kind of a funny story. Like I started off uh I was in college, thought that I had wanted to go to med school, and so I figured I would get my EMT cert um to see how I felt about medicine as a whole. And uh Captain Pendleton was actually my he was, I think, Lieutenant well, he was paramedic Pendleton at the time, promoted to Lieutenant Pendleton during our class. And uh as we were talking through my EMT course, he was like, Have you ever thought about the fire service? And I was like, sounds pretty cool. Um, so he encouraged me to look at some volunteer opportunities once I got that EMT cert. And next thing I knew, I got super hooked and started volunteering with Boulder Rural, and those guys uh they treated me great, brought me up in the fire service pretty strongly and really got got their hooks into me. And uh next thing I know, here I am years later, just digging this job. It's uh it's a great career.

SPEAKER_00 4:45

Isn't it just a great example of what every interaction we have, uh, you know, how impactful that could be. I mean, probably when when Captain Pendleton was talking to you, you you probably just you know, it was just a conversation to him. But look what you've done now. I mean, you've given back so much, and I just I think that that's so important to think about that you know we can we can influence others every single day just in our in our day-to-day. So it's it's just really cool because I see the the impact you've had on our organization in such a short time, and uh we're so thankful that that conversation happened, that that interaction happened.

SPEAKER_01 5:23

Yeah, I mean thank you and me too. It's been it's been great for me. And like I said, this has been a great organ organization to work for, and I couldn't be happier.

SPEAKER_00 5:36

Yeah, you've been part of our water rescue team. I want to clarify here a little bit for people, we we kind of did some rebrand branding a few years ago. We used to just call ourselves the the dive team, right? And we just know that this in there's so much more um involved in in this, and so we've re rebranded as the water rescue team with with dive functionality. It's uh what brought you to that as a specialty? Because you you jumped into this like really, really early in your career here.

SPEAKER_01 6:05

Yeah, honestly, the uh dive or in this case now, uh water rescue side of things was like one of the big draws for me to the Westminster Fire Department. Um I'm like a big water guy at heart. Uh my happiest places are in the water, under the water, on the water. Um, and so I knew coming in early on that that was something that I I really was gonna want to do. Um I was fortunate enough that like pretty much the day after I cleared probation, they had uh an opening on the team. And so I I threw in an application and um here we are seven years later. So uh yeah, you know, I grew up diving. I've had my recreational dive search since I was in middle school and just knew this was uh a big passion spot for me and wanted to wanted to keep on that track.

SPEAKER_00 6:57

Yeah, it's uh it it it dive has always been um water rescue dive has always been a pretty big part of our history and our culture within the Westminster Fire Department. Uh we've we've taken on, we've always been part of a regional approach, but things have changed a little bit over the years with that, and and we've gone um we've focused that energy now into our North Area region, which we talk about a lot, our our automatic aid CAD to CAD region. And with a lot of our specialties, a lot of our teams, we have involvement from every fire department in that region, you know, when it comes to hazmat technical rescue. Um, but when it comes to water rescue, it's still kind of our thing. Uh Westminster that we're providing us and then one other department, Thornton, is also involved in that, in that team. But Westminster has really taken the lead through the years, and it's something that's been very important to us. So it's it's so great to see that continued. And I appreciate you coming in with this new motivation and and keeping this going uh for us because it is it is interesting to think about water rescue in a landlocked state, right? Like it it just a lot of people probably don't think about the fire department, you know, especially in an area like this, being so involved in water rescue. Can you talk about that a little bit? Kind of what we do um in this landlocked and very drought-ridden state right now, because there is still water out there. I don't think people people know that, but there is still water and emergencies still happen.

SPEAKER_01 8:30

Yeah, they sure do. Um, and I mean, we've got all kinds of different water and water-related emergencies that can pop up. I mean, we've got reservoirs all over the place, small ponds, retention ponds, um, streams, rivers, all kinds of different stuff that exist just here within the Denver metro area, and that's before we even get up into like the foothills and the mountains. Um, and kind of as you were talking about, like one of the unique pieces of uh being a water rescue team in a landlocked state is that we are a little bit more few and far between. You know, there's kind of a a handful of teams that exist across the entire front range, uh, which then gives us some opportunities to assist other agencies even outside of that that North area um kind of aspect that we have, especially because you know, anybody that that dives recreationally knows dive is not a cheap hobby necessarily. And so the the initial startup costs, if if nothing else, can be pretty tough for a lot of uh departments to to kind of bite the bullet on. Um, and so that's really where the the kind of regionalization of this uh becomes super beneficial. Um, but as far as call types and that kind of stuff that we're looking at, we handle if something takes place in a body of water, whether it's moving or stationary, that falls to us on the on the water rescue team side of stuff. Whether it's from you know that that swimmer that disappears subsurface, uh we've over my tenure on the dive team had uh a handful of cars that have wound up in different bodies of water, whether they were put there purposefully by uh, you know, bad guys looking to ditch something or uh somebody that you know just made a mistake and took a wrong turn. Um but then we also have the the swift water aspect of all of this as well. So um anytime we start dealing with moving water, that now becomes a swift water emergency, which then warrants a totally different response and a totally different kind of set of training and and skills that we need to bring to the table there. And we see Swiftwater stuff come up a uh a decent amount within the Denver metro area. Um, less so, I would say, probably in our district currently. Um, but we are available to assist any of those uh other agencies because when we start talking Swiftwater, those those calls can become super manpower intensive super quickly. Uh, because you can start having search areas if we're looking for a missing person that's going to extend over, you know, potentially like a mile, depending on how the water's moving. That also then kind of leads us into floodwater, where you know, you look back at 2013 when Boulder County had their big floods, that is another realm that falls to the water rescue team, allows us a great opportunity to help a ton of people in a very, very short period of time. Um, and then there's always kind of our our last little discipline that is covered by us, but also not unique to us, is we train all of our companies to handle uh anything related to ice rescue. So the big piece that falls to us is if that that person or dog or whatever that was on the ice and has now gone through the ice becomes subsurface, that for sure then falls to us to handle on the dive side of things.

SPEAKER_00 11:47

And some of these some of these calls then start to cross over with some of our other special teams as as well, right? So especially when we're talking about swiftwater, you talk about how uh uh manpower intensive swift water is. Yeah, just because of the the natural physics of it, right? It it can start to cover a lot of ground really, really fast. But then we start to cross over with um some of our other technical skills. Can you talk about just getting the weeds a little bit with what a a swiftwater operation might look like for people that aren't aware and and how it involves rope systems and and search techniques and that sort of thing?

SPEAKER_01 12:24

Yeah, absolutely. So I mean I'll I'll start off kind of probably a little bit more vague and then we'll get down to a little more kind of agency specific here. But when we're looking at swiftwater operations, um, if we've got a missing person that's in the water, like we're gonna need uh a pile of people to be able to initiate the search because the the general rule of thumb is that any area that we're searching, we want to be able to look at from two different directions with uh two different sets of eyes. So we'll have somebody that's gonna start from just above kind of that last scene point, which is gonna be gathered based off of information that we get from witnesses, evidence that we come across, you know, whether it's they had a picnic basket sitting on a rock and that's the last place that anybody saw them. Um and so we'll go slightly upriver of that spot and then start working our way down. So we're gonna need people that will be able to search the entirety of that river so long as the areas that we're searching are safe, because we may have to adjust which direction it is that we're moving. Um, we generally try to search in water from in the direction of the current, just because it working against the current is is super, super challenging. And then we're also gonna have teams searching the shorelines and we're looking for just all these high-value uh target areas here. So when we start then talking about, you know, they've been missing for 15 minutes and the the rivers flowing at, you know, 1100 CFS and some of our narrower rivers, like we're talking pretty significant miles per hour there that these people are uh are able to travel. And so we can have areas that'll cover three-quarters of a mile that we have to search. And that's that's not unreasonable to think. So just from a manpower perspective, there alone, it becomes super intensive. Then if we start talking about uh significant movement within that water and some of these areas that may have some of our more dangerous things, like a strainer, which is gonna be a you know, a tree or a barbed wire fence or something like that, that's that's caught up in there that poses a significant hazard to us getting entangled. Um then we start getting into the technical rescue side of things, where we're gonna need to utilize our ropes and our boats to set up high line systems where we're running lines across the river to be able to control a boat and place our rescuers exactly where we want them to be and to do so efficiently but also safely. And so it becomes this kind of all tech discipline uh response to these, which then kind of plays into how we function within the the North area because we've got uh our two water rescue teams um between the Westminster Fire Department and Thornton Fire, and then we also have the North Area Tech Team side of things. Um and so North Area Tech, depending on which agency it is that you work for, uh also handles some aspects of Swipwater. And so that's where, like for me as the water rescue coordinator, this starts to get a little bit difficult because now I've got the the dive side of things that we need to handle for us from a training perspective and that kind of stuff, just between Wesley and Thornton. But then when we start looking at the North Area, now I've got this whole slew of other people that we need to make sure are trained to a standard that are going to be able to operate with the risk of the rest of our kind of water-centric people in a safe and efficient manner. Um, so that's something that we have a monthly meeting about. We have a North Area water rescue team that's kind of a little breakoff group of the North Area tech team. And we meet regularly to try to figure out ways that we can be more efficient and function as a large unit together because I mean we're looking at like structure fire, maybe second alarm type responses as far as the number of units that we're going to need to manage some of these incidents and just making sure that we're all on the same page with the same standards and the same equipment so that we're we're super interoperable is always a bit of a challenge.

SPEAKER_00 16:22

I'm I'm just always amazed by our ability to operate on these high-risk, you know, low frequency type of events that we do that take so much training. And I think what people need to understand that maybe aren't in our area is that these are we're small departments working together. So these are all kind of supplemental job responsibilities for us. You know, some of the large agencies across the country might have the ability to have a dedicated um specialty team that handles technical rescue, dive rescue, that's the you know, those sorts of things. We don't have that ability. So you all are doing this uh you know you're running the 911 calls every day, you're running fires, you're running EMS, and and you're doing this kind of on the side, and you're so dang skilled at it. And it's just very, very impressive that we pull that off.

SPEAKER_01 17:18

Yeah, I mean, we're fortunate that we have a lot of people that are willing to step up and take on this kind of extra responsibility. And you know, for lack of a better term, at times extra burden because it is a decent amount of extra training, and especially when we start talking about you know, Swiftwater, it is not a it's not a gentle training. You're just throwing yourself into a a river and you're kind of at the the whim of the river at the end of the day.

SPEAKER_00 17:40

Uh I see the uh I see the the work comp reports that come through. I I can always tell when we're doing Swiftwater, our annual Swiftwater training for the year, because they just start rolling through, yeah, banging into rocks. And yeah, it's it's usually uh it's usually the soft tissue injuries that people can recover from pretty fast, but it it it's not fun.

SPEAKER_01 18:01

Yeah, that's uh definitely the case. And I mean the good news is is while you get banged up and that kind of stuff, it is an absolute blast. And I mean, there's you know, I get to go out and teach these Swiftwater Academies, and there's nothing better. Like it's uh it's a paid day on the river, just chilling in the water, doing doing fun stuff and learning skills, fine-tuning skills, um, and watching people's, like from an instructor's perspective, watching people's confidence grow over that first week. I mean, that first day that we hit the water, you see a lot of whites have a lot of eyes. And by by even just that Friday at the end of the week, watching you know, somebody who was incredibly uncomfortable have no problem jumping in after victims and swimming across the river to start setting up those those highline systems and that kind of stuff is super cool and super rewarding from my perspective as an instructor. Um, but then also cool to watch those guys just build their confidence and in that aspect and see what they're able to kind of push through.

SPEAKER_00 19:02

Let's let's go there now. Let's go to training a little bit since you you're talking about it. Uh, what are the training requirements, uh, both from an ongoing team basis, but also uh if you're interested in this team and want to get involved, um, what are you teaching and and what's required uh for for people to, you know, what certifications are required and what trainings might be uh voluntary?

SPEAKER_01 19:27

Yeah, absolutely. So I mean, from a like month-to-month kind of team training perspective, uh, a majority of our training uh is pretty dive dive focused. Um, we spend a lot of time focused on the dive side of things because it is one of the more dangerous things I think that we do in the fire service. Um, and that even comes down to the training side of it. You know, everybody tends to have a pretty kind of lax attitude towards dive because it's like that thing that you do on vacation in the Caribbean. It's just like, ah, this is super chill, man. But at the end of the day, anytime we submerge in the water, like we are immediately entering an ideal H environment. And so we need to make sure that we're we're giving it the same level of attention that we would a structure fire, because you know, we still talk about those as uh, you know, kind of high-risk, low frequency events, like these are comparably high risk, um, if not sometimes I would argue higher, because at least in the in the structure environment, you've got a window to bail out of. Um, there's no windows underwater uh if things go sideways. So we we try to train uh a minimum of 10 months out of the year. Uh we'll spend at least one day per month uh with each of the shifts, getting out there and getting them in the water and just practicing different skills. So that's kind of our our general training schedule for our team. As far as if anybody's interested in joining, like the only prerequisite that exists for the uh water rescue team is I I just need you to be able to swim. Um can't swim, this is probably not the right team for you. Um, but but fundamental swimming skills are the only prereq, and outside of that, we will make sure that you have all of the certifications that are required of you. Um and so we generally try to start with the dive side of things. We um put them through a public safety diver and then a dive rescue one course. Um those run concurrently in our Metro Dive Academy, and that Metro Dive Academy is super cool because we get to train with not only like people within our organization, but you as a student are going through with students from Thornton Fire, with from West Metro, from South Metro. And so we do have this like kind of truly Metro Denver Academy that takes place. And so you make a lot of good contacts from kind of across the entire area, which end up being pretty helpful in in the long run. Um, and I think from the sounds of it, we should be adding uh boulder fire into that that academy here shortly as well. So you'll go through The first week is your public safety diver. Then you go through your dive rescue one. Public safety diver just teaches you your like fundamental. This is how you scuba dive. Here's a regulator, a tank, all of the fundamental skills that you need to be able to operate safely under the water. Then when we move into week two, is when we move you from like your standard recreational setups into our more specific equipment. So because we're diving in contaminated water and cold water and that kind of thing, we dive in a full face mask and a and a dry suit so that we're fully encapsulated. That way you don't get any oil or anything like that on you from a vehicle or um, you know, ooey gooeys from uh underwater bodies, that kind of thing. So we'll train you on that and then also how we execute search patterns because it is all a little bit different than anything that we do in the fire service. Then once we get you through those, we'll get you your Swiftwater One and Two certifications where you'll spend a week out on the river, and then you are are blessed and able to start uh acting as a full-fledged member of the water rescue team.

SPEAKER_00 22:59

I know it's gonna be different in every fire department, every operation, but for us anyway, we're not requiring a whole ton of experience in this area. It's it's really something that people can get involved with early. I mean, if you really think about it, it is so different from our uh the the normal training, the normal skills we get, say in the academy and and ongoing throughout the year, that you know, someone coming in with 15 years experience, other than having a little bit more emergency response experience under their belt, they don't have any more experience necessary, necessarily on the water. You know, these this is just a totally different skill set. So we really encourage people, you know, that maybe think that they don't have enough experience yet to get involved. And and I look at examples like you. I mean, you got involved at such an early uh time in your fire service career and it's just uh catapulted you uh in your just organizational awareness and it just allows you to to really contribute in a in a high-level, meaningful way. And I so I just really encourage anybody that is interested in any of these special teams to to reach out and start start getting involved. We need the next generation to step in and kind of take the lead on these things. Uh, you talked about the training piece, and you did, you did allude to you need to be able to swim. This comes up a lot. Um I don't think you need to be able to, it doesn't necessarily need to be style points kind of swimming, like it doesn't have to be the perfect smoothest swimming, but you do need to stay afloat and you need to move across the pool. What is that swim test, just so everyone knows, uh, just for the the kind of the key to entry level swim test?

SPEAKER_01 24:41

Um so our certifying agency is a company called Dive Rescue International. Um, they're the ones that issue all of our dive certs to us. And so through them, um, if you are a member of a dive team holding one of their certs, you are required to do an annual swim test. Uh so you'll do it when you start the academy and then every year for the rest of the time that you're on uh after that. And that swim test is called the IADRS swim test. Um, and it consists of a 500-yard swim, an 800-yard fin kick. Uh, we have to do a 15-minute water tread where the last two minutes your hands have to be out of the water. Um, you have to do in a 100-yard inert uh diver tow. So you'll be you'll both be in your full dive setups and you'll be towing for 100 yards uh back and forth in the pool there. And then you just have to do a simple object retrieval from a minimum of nine feet. Um, so it's uh I mean it's not an easy test, but it's also not one of those that, you know, if you have it's really there for us to just be able to assess it. Like you have a baseline level of physical fitness, which we as an organization are fortunate enough that because of all of the testing and uh that kind of stuff that we do between our JASPA and our time with CSU and that kind of stuff, that we know that that exists. But really for me, then it shows me like, are you comfortable in the water or are you not? Um, and if you're not comfortable, are you uncomfortable to a point that it's gonna be a problem and put you in danger, or are you uncomfortable to a point that like we can spend some time working with you through all of this and get you to that comfortable place? Um so even if you're slightly uncomfortable in the water, like we have loads of time, loads of training, and we will get you there so long as I can make sure that you just can meet that kind of baseline level of requirement that exists for us.

SPEAKER_00 26:30

Yeah, we don't want you drowning on the first day. That's uh it's poor form. So very cool. You talked about uh Swift Water, you alluded to ice rescue a little bit. Um, we also have some pretty sizable lakes in our area, uh recreational lakes, and then a whole bunch of ponds and stuff, of course. Uh so I imagine diving in Colorado is probably not like diving in the Caribbean.

SPEAKER_01 26:54

Wish it was.

SPEAKER_00 26:55

Uh but anyway, let's let's talk about a typical dive call or water rescue call we might have, let's say at our Stanley Lake. Um big recreational lake. We have a lot of wind in Colorado. We do a lot of paddle boarding in Colorado. We don't always know when those wind gusts are gonna come up. That's pretty typical call for us. We'll go on multiples of those through the summer. Let's talk about start to finish how number one, our our engine companies and our medic crews integrate into this because they're often going to be the first ones to get there. And then how we build out that structure, command structure, but then also involve then the water rescue team. Because it takes a little while to scramble that water rescue team. So we rely, we all of our providers, all of our responders have a base level of water rescue training, both you like you talked about on the ice side, but then also just on um the still water side and and on the swift water side as well. Can you just talk about what a call looks like there and how it builds out?

SPEAKER_01 27:58

Yeah, absolutely. Um, so the first piece I'll mention for anybody watching or listening that doesn't know this. Um, so Stanley Lake is our our probably largest kind of target body or target hazard body of water in the city of Westminster. Um, and what is interesting about it is it is no motorized watercraft, but we still get, you know, 30, 60 paddle boarders out there over the summer months. And depending on how many are out there, we get these big wind events and we run into significant issues where people are unable to get back on their boards, they're getting pushed up against rocks, can be kind of quite a mess. So the the first step that we've taken to help make sure that when that that call goes out is um I get to work with the Stanley Lake Rangers. There are like first line of defense out there on Stanley Lake to give us a hand. They always have a boat in the water when there are people out on the water. And so they start affecting rescues for anybody that's it's at the surface and start helping us identify do we have anybody that's missing? Has anybody gone subsurface? That kind of thing. Um, so they're kind of our our initial catch-all for pieces of information. Then because we don't hard staff our dive unit, all of our dive equipment is uh cross-staffed with our our engine three and medic three over there at our station three, that call will get toned out and we're gonna be sending our station five and our station three crews up there, and with our station three crew ideally being in quarters so that we can get that dive unit rolling immediately. Um, if not, we've got plans set up where it will be coordinated through the battalion chief as to what diver is gonna be able to swing by and grab the dive equipment as needed. Once we get up there, that uh first arriving engine company will establish command and they're gonna just start gathering information for us. We're gonna try to figure out who's missing, how many people were missing, what do we need to do. We also have a boat that's kept out there, a zodiac inflatable boat, and so that'll get launched by the Stanley Lake Rangers prior to our arrival. So it'll be sitting in the water ready for us to get out there and start snagging people out of the water from the surface level. Uh once the divers get there, if we have anybody that can confirm to us or we have a suspicion that people are going to be uh or that somebody's gone missing, their subsurface, we're gonna start launching divers. Anytime we uh are working a dive operation, we're looking at a minimum of three divers because I need to have a primary diver. Then we have our secondary diver that we've now renamed to our Rick diver. So they're there primarily just in case the primary diver has some sort of issue. As you said, diving in Colorado is not that cool. We have a lot of entanglement hazards, weird stuff that ends up under the water there. And so making sure that we have somebody that's there to protect them uh is always essential. And then we keep our 90% diver uh on the boat. And that 90% diver just exists there so that way if the the secondary diver has to go down, we still have a another safety in place in case extra help's needed for whatever whatever we have going on. We'll identify again that last scene point. If we don't have a great last scene point, we have sonar uh that we can run off of any of our boats that gives us great crystal clear pictures these days of uh what things look like kind of along the the bottom of the body of water. And then we'll start just doing quick dives and high high likelihood areas where like, oh, that looks like a good hit on the sonar. Like, oh, Joe Blow over there on the shore said, like, yeah, that's where he's pretty sure they saw them go down. We'll go down, do a quick search and see if we're able to find anything. Um, we operate on like a 90-minute rescue window, and that 90 minutes starts the second that that person goes subsurface. So the last time anybody can give us that they were at the surface and then they disappeared, that is when our clock starts. So time is of the essence here. I feel like I can only hold my breath for like 25 seconds. So I always try to keep that kind of in the back of my mind as we're going to these calls. Like, all right, start holding your breath because that's what they're gonna have to do. Um, and so that's generally how it goes. Um, once these calls start, uh Thornton, our uh partner in dive is gonna be automatically dispatched to these calls and they'll bring us an extra slew of divers. And so we'll be able to just keep a working rotation until we hit that 90-minute window, and then we'll transition from that rescue mode into that recovery mode, where we'll kind of view it as that tactical shift where we're gonna all come back on land here, sit down for a second, kind of rehash everything we've done, create a new plan, and slow things down just a little bit um to make sure that we're we're keeping that safety factor at an all-time, all-time high.

SPEAKER_00 32:38

And 90 minutes seems that seems like a long time, but we do have the benefit of cold water here in our state. Yes. And it seems like there's always a new case somewhere happening. We're always watching what's going on across the industry of success. And we're gonna give that victim every chance that we possibly can, because we're gonna be in that risk-alot mode for as long as we possibly can. Can you talk about that at all and um how we are able to uh give that 90-minute rescue window?

SPEAKER_01 33:14

Yeah, absolutely. So anytime that we're dealing with a cold water drowning, which, as you said, like any water in the state of Colorado that is outdoors is deemed to be a cold water drowning. Um gives us kind of an advantage because we get this like medical side of things that takes place where our victims are shunting blood from their extremities to their kind of core pieces there, their heart rates are slowing down. We get that mammalian dive reflex that kicks in. Um, and so as a result, there have been several documented cases of people that have been subsurfaced for you know 60 to 90 minutes that have been able to been, they've been resuscitated and been found to be neurologically intact because their body was in such this like kind of hibernation conservation state that it allows them to, you know, kind of keep functioning uh just at the the bare minimum needed to maintain you know good brain function. There's the term. Um so that's uh that's kind of why that 90-minute window exists for us.

SPEAKER_00 34:12

You alluded to uh sonar and some of the equipment we have. We've got uh that's specialized uh well, specialized, it's a it's an extra boat that we have staged at that specific lake, and that's for other reasons. Um, but it does allow us to get in the water real quick. But can you talk about some of that other qu equipment that does exist? We we just took delivery of of our new dive truck. In fact, you just put it in service yesterday, right? Yes. I'll try to I'm gonna try to share some some pictures of that here in a minute. Um, but can you just talk about uh the equipment that we do have, the boats we use, the technological equipment, and uh just paint the picture for that.

SPEAKER_01 34:52

Yeah, absolutely. So from uh a boat perspective, we run a tandem trailer. So we've got a flat bottom John boat on the bottom and then an inflatable Zodiac style boat on top. Both of those boats provide us like a pretty significant amount of uh, well, they're they're advantageous to us in that they can be launched in pretty shallow water, which is uh pretty beneficial for us. Um so if we don't have enough room to be able to launch that flat bottom john boat, that inflatable zodiac can be lifted off of that trailer and just carried down to the water. So it gives us the ability to get a boat into pretty much any any type of water that we need to. And then that flat bottom john boat currently runs a uh hummingbird sonar on it that's got great visibility. Um, and we're even looking this year uh kind of to match Thornton Fire that we like to try to have similar equipment for that interoperability piece of it. And so they just moved over to a a new Garmin style uh sonar that we're we're gonna be considering here as well. Um that gives us even greater depth and a 360 kind of live live feed of what's going on that we can use off of a pole cam, even. And our new dive truck here. Uh she's real pretty and a very, very nice upgrade from the the old bread truck that we've been running on for what feels like an eternity. Um, but this has been a great addition for us. This allows us to carry all of the BCDs that we need. We've got reserved dive bottles on here, all of our swift water tools that we might need, high line equipment, anything like that, all housed in a single apparatus. Um, and this apparatus also has the towing capacity that we needed to be able to pull that trailer uh that holds both of our boats uh as well. Um, so that's pretty pretty nice in that aspect. Um, another tool that we're we're working through and kind of figuring out some of the hiccups and kind of navigating through that we have is our uh underwater ROV. So this is our our underwater robot that we can splash down. It's got sonar on it, it's got cameras on it, it's even got a grab hook so we can at least hook on to something. So if we find somebody or whatever object it is we're looking for, we can hook onto that and follow that down, uh, follow that umbilical that controls it down to be able to locate what it is that we're uh we've we've found with that there. That's super nice in that it doesn't care if there's no air, and it doesn't matter what its dive tables say, like it can dive for as long and as as frequently as we need it to, um, and can get closer into some kind of nasty stuff that we might not be be able to do as safely, um especially when we start talking at depth. Stanley Lake, for example, is oddly deep, like hundred, hundred feet, 104 feet, I think, at its deepest. Um, so for us as as divers, that becomes a pretty big challenge. Um so being able to have something that goes down there and and handles that is uh is pretty great. And then the last kind of cool technological piece that's just come up, uh, the tail end of last year, we were able to start uh purchasing some new dive computers for uh our divers. And these new dive computers are an incredible piece of technology, um, primarily from a safety aspect for for us. And it's like one of the more exciting things for me is the team coordinator. Um, they've got the ability to transmit all sorts of data to a surface buoy that then I can see real time on an iPad. So I can GPS locate any of our divers while they're subsurface. I can see exactly what their error levels are at. And so it just increases that safety factor exponentially for us. Um and it's a really exciting, really cool piece of technology for us that I think will um be pretty beneficial. Um, and I mean crazy stuff even now with how the technology's evolved, where they have the ability from the dive computer to send me a text. You know, it's a preset number of text messages, but the idea that you can now text underwater is like pretty bonkers to me. So we're we're seeing lots of growth in the underwater environment right now as far as the technology side of things go. And it's it's pretty exciting and uh it's pretty cool for us here.

SPEAKER_00 38:56

Yeah, so dang cool. And keeping us safer, but also allowing us just to expand and do and and do more than we ever have. We uh you know, we've talked about some of the calls. We also support our police department a lot uh for recoveries and and on the the uh you know the crime side of things, and so these tools really just help us out, especially in those uh you know, definitely in the rescue times, but also in those recovery times, and it's the safety factor, I think, that uh is just huge with that. I think that's really cool. So you saw some pictures there of our new truck that just went in service. And when you were talking about you mentioned the old bread truck, like we had humble beginnings. I mean, we we literally started with a rainbow bread truck was uh was our one of our early uh dive vans that that we had to to house all of our equipment. And so some of these things do take some time, you have to be patient with it as an organization. And uh we were we've been able to build up to this now where we do have just some legit equipment and uh legit training to go along with it. So very, very cool.

SPEAKER_01 40:10

Yeah, absolutely. We're we're super excited about it. And you know, as as much as I I love to dog on that old bread truck, like it also served a great purpose and filled a great need for us. And like the the predecessors that came before me did a fantastic job of outfitting that thing. It just it can only last for so long. And so being able to to upgrade and and move on to something uh a little newer, a little shinier, a little bit more comfortable. You know, we've got enough seats finally for everybody that's on the team. Just a couple little things like that as the team has grown. We just needed to see that apparatus change with it.

SPEAKER_00 40:47

You can't truly appreciate something unless you've you know you've had to endure something else, you know? Exactly. It really does help with uh with that appreciation factor. So we talked about some of the calls, you know, we talked about the Swift Water, we talked about uh still water, uh, we've talked about some of the police work that you guys do to help uh recover vehicles, weapons, just help them with searches for you know cold cases. We we've been involved in a lot of that. You guys had a really unique deployment uh not too long ago, right?

SPEAKER_01 41:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 41:26

As everybody probably knows, we we have our share of wildfire here in Colorado, and I think the way things are going right now, we've had uh more red flag days in February and March already than we've had some entire fire seasons. And so it's gonna be another good one. You guys had a deployment that I don't think you were um anticipating. Can you talk about that deployment on the wildfire?

SPEAKER_01 41:54

Yeah, I think to say not anticipating would be an understatement there. This one really came out of left field and caught me off guard. Um, I remember getting the phone call from Chief Mae Kranz, who's our our special teams and training chief, where he was like, hey, they need our dive team up at this wildfire. And I was like, those two things don't make sense to me, Chief. Like, you're gonna have to explain it a little bit more. And what ended up happening is is the the location of this wildfire up in was up in Leadville, um, was right around the the Twin Lakes area. And so they were having some access issues where it was just not super efficient for them to have to hike into some of these areas. So they happened to have a boat up there that was not going to be able to stay for the entire length of the fire that they were gonna need it. So they reached out to the state, and the state saw that we had a couple of boats sitting in the system that were available to be deployed, and they put the phone call into us. So myself and our now uh SAM officer Eric Anderson deployed up to this wildfire, and we were responsible for just running equipment personnel back and forth across Twin Lakes for we ended up being up there for 10 or 12 days just helping support their operations, and it was one of the more interesting experiences of my life. Um and I learned a ton off of that because it like I'm not a wild lane guy. I'd had a little wild lane experience, but I I don't have any of these like engine boss certifications or anything like that that help you understand how to operate within this environment. And so when you show up and it's like okay, and they're like, Do you have this paperwork? And you're like, I've never heard of that governmental form that you're describing here. Like it's a it's a very humbling experience. I spent a lot of time in like the finance tents and some of these other areas just sitting down with them being like, talk to me like I'm in the third grade and I know nothing. And they were super nice, worked really well with us, and gave us a great opportunity to go out and and showcase some of the abilities that we have. And everybody was super excited to be out there. Um, I've never seen a happier group of wild. Land firefighters than when you put them on a boat with their packs and tell them you're not hiking anywhere and we're just gonna go for a rip across a lake here. We'll get you over to where you need to be. Um, so it was uh it was a super cool experience and and a lot of fun for Eric and I.

SPEAKER_00 44:14

Yeah, and I think uh we're hoping to do more and more of that. And I think there's gonna be more opportunity for that. Like you said, our our equipment, our boats are available within the state system. We're hoping to maybe eventually branch out into the federal system a little bit more on some of these responses. So I think it's it's just important to understand that these uh these special teams, you know, offer some opportunities beyond just what you're thinking about. It's not just diving in a murky uh cold lake. Like there, there are some really, really cool opportunities to break free of the monotony a little bit and challenge yourself and and really give back. So I just thought it was important to talk about that deployment because it was pretty unique. I don't think we've ever had anything like it. We've of course deployed to floods and we've uh deployed to large searches maybe outside of our region, but uh to deploy to a wildfire. When I when I heard about that too, I'm like, we're we're what? We're we're we're using our resources for what? But then it it all made sense and it it's all for the greater good. And it's getting you guys' experience as well. Like how much how much boat experience, boat operations experience did you get just from that one event? I mean, you you you probably know those those things in and out now.

SPEAKER_01 45:30

Yeah, it was perfect. And it also happened to coincide with when those boats were pretty new. So we had not had a ton of time to familiarize ourselves. Um, you know, I was fortunate in having uh Lieutenant Anderson there with me because he's he's a boat guy. He owns boats, he knows his way around boats, he knows how to drive them. And so he was able to spend a bunch of time just teaching me kind of the ins and outs and different ways that we can maneuver the boats that we now uh have as a part of an annual training that we do within the North area because we have boats within all of our different agencies. We get them out on the water and and practice through a lot of the stuff. And my competency went up substantially because of uh our ability to just spend time going around on that lake and taking care of different stuff that we needed to.

SPEAKER_00 46:16

Very cool. So as we kind of start to wrap up a little bit here, um I just want to give you an opportunity to put your pitch out there for people that might be curious about water rescue and and may wonder why it it's in the fire service. Well, I mean everything's in the fire service, right? We're we're kind of the catch-all for everything. But if it's here, we might as well embrace it. And it is a really cool opportunity. Do you have anything to say to those people that you know within our organization or in other organizations that might be looking at this uh specialty?

SPEAKER_01 46:48

Yeah, I mean, water rescue is, in my opinion, and obviously I'm gonna be a little bit biased here, like one of the coolest forms of kind of technical rescue that exists out there, um, where you get to utilize a pile of different skills. Some of them are very different from skill sets that you've had before as uh as a firefighter and and put those to use. You're gonna get ropes and knot skills, you're gonna, you know, get all of that cool kind of techie side of stuff, but you're gonna be able to do it in board shorts, which is like that's the dream as far as I'm concerned. And I'm not gonna ever cram you into a tiny little tube like those tech guys will. Uh, I'll give you just wide open spaces, you know, and everybody kind of knocks on the fact that, like, oh yeah, it's just murky and nasty and gross down there. But honestly, like we have a lot of really beautiful dive days where visibility, you know, I'm not gonna sit here and tell you that it's a hundred feet like you're diving in the Caribbean, but you can see a decent amount. We do our penetration dives under the ice, and those are just beautiful. There's great visibility all around. You're watching the ice catch your bubbles up above you, like it's it's really pretty and really cool. And I can I can assure you that we will train you to a the highest degree possible so that you will be safe in doing it as well. And the other side of it is like while this is a very different skill set, like these skills translate into day-to-day firefighting skills super, super well. You know, it's another opportunity where you're in a truly blacked-out environment at times or low visibility environment, and you're breathing off of a compressed air tank and figuring out how to navigate that and what that looks like and how we're gonna conserve our air and how we're gonna do all of these different things. And it's just working on your search patterns and that kind of stuff. Um, so there is some crossover in that I do think, especially like if you're newer, like getting on to the water rescue team earlier, just helps benefit your other skill sets across all of the disciplines of everything that it is that we do, where we'll give you the opportunity to get really comfortable with a lot of different things that you might not always be able to train on in the same in the same environment. If you're an agency out there looking to start a water rescue program, like by all means, give me a call anytime. I would be happy to talk to you about kind of some of the ups and downs that we've had as a team. But overall, like at the end of the day, the big thing that I I talk about with um any of our chief staff, I know Chief, you've heard me say this several times. I think like these calls are super time sensitive, they're super important, and and somebody has to respond to them. And if you don't have somebody in that district that's capable of doing that, if your PD doesn't handle it, um it's gonna be up to you. And you know, these calls are gonna be highly publicized and super traumatic for anybody who's going through them. So we want to be there and be efficient and be good at this. And you know, I would be more than happy to help you get you dialed in in any aspect that I can. I'm not saying I have all the answers, um, but the the water rescue side of the fire service is a very small piece of the pie. So we we know people all across the country that can get you in contact with anybody that you need um and and get you dialed in as best we can.

SPEAKER_00 50:02

Yeah, we'll put your your contact information in the show notes. As always, you can always reach out to me as well, and I'll get you in touch with Alec. And I mean, you've been fortunate the last couple years to be the coordinator of this team. Uh, so you've gotten uh a peek behind the curtain on the administrative side as well, which is a whole lot of fun, right? Sure is to work with people like me.

SPEAKER_01 50:23

You're easy to work with, Chief. Come on, you know that. But uh it is interesting, especially when we start dealing with multiple agencies all in the same room, figuring out the the little intricacies that change. Um, you know, I know we've talked a lot about stakeholders. I know that's been a big piece of uh one of your previous episodes here on the podcast, but like especially when it comes to to water, it's such a multi-agency approach that has to show up that your your stakeholder numbers grow exponentially. And so as that grows, getting everybody to to be on the same page takes uh a lot of time and a lot of diligence. And I appreciate the support that I've had from you and our organization. I know there's there's quite a few people that I'm sure are sick of hearing the word dive come out of your mouth, just as uh that's the same for me. Um so it's uh it's been super interesting and enlightening just to see kind of how everything functions, uh, especially for us within that that larger kind of amoeba that we live in of the North area.

SPEAKER_00 51:24

Yeah, I think with the regionalization, it is such a positive thing, but it uh it does add complexity as well. And it can be frustrating sometimes because you know what needs to happen on the technical side of things, but it it really does become then steering that ship and and trying to get us over a period of time where we need to be and just trying to keep making that progress. And I'm just man, I'm just super impressed with you, your leadership. You're doing some pretty remarkable things with I mean, seven years on on the fire department, my mind is blown by by the work that you're doing. And I I just I just appreciate the heck out of you and um your motivation, your positive attitude, and I think people could just really learn a lot from you. And uh yeah, with that, is there anything else that uh we missed today that that you'd like to add, Alec?

SPEAKER_01 52:19

Uh there's not much that I can think of that that I feel like we missed. Um water's the best, it's super cool. There's uh a lot of different stuff out there that can fit a lot of different needs, and so um you know, if again, if you're thinking about getting into the the water rescue realm, feel free to hit me up. We'll get you get you dialed in. If you're somebody who works for our agency and wants to join the team, please, please, please reach out to me. We are always looking for new team members, especially as we see attrition uh kind of growing across the fire service as people kind of age out and retire. We will always be in need of extra special teams members. And so um would love to have you just make sure you can swim.

SPEAKER_00 53:03

That's why I've never been on the team. I've always wanted to. Do you think I still could? Do you think I could get a swim coach and let's make it happen. Enjoy. We'll get you dialed in, Chief. Thank you. Alec, you're an absolute rock star. Thank you. Thanks for being here. Uh, thanks to all of you for for for watching and listening. As always, if you have future show ideas or feedback, please email opstalk.wfd at gmail.com and we'll see you next time.