Trailer, van, truck, ambulance or car, it all boils down to personal preference and what fits the needs of your team.
If youre a Recovery Team it really doesnt matter what you use. Its going to me a mobile container to contain gear and equipment that will go down the road like everyone else. If theres room having a nice warm/cool area to undress and relax and hide in is also nice.
There are problems with any means of transportation. Vehicles that dont get used all the time dont like to start or when they do they dont like to stay running. Trailers are nice but where is the tow vehicle which is subject to the problems above?
Now here is where things get a bit more complicated. If you are in actuality a Rescue/Recovery Team time is paramount. In a rescue there isnt the luxury of the extra time for someone to respond somewhere to get a vehicle or hook up an equipment trailer. If a boat is needed, that means that you now need at least two people to respond for two or more vehicles/trailers.
Ill use us for example. A very large majority of our calls involve a roadway so a boat or back up equipment trailer is a piece of equipment that can respond a bit later. Chances are we have a boat on the water already and we have Marine Deputies so we normally arent depleting the diver pool for it. The divers respond to the scene, get suited and concentrate on the dive at hand. Fire/Med will normally beat a boat and be setting up shortly after the divers are ready. They also bring along a nice Cascade System or a compressor trailer so we have zero air worries. We also dont take a diver from the pool to operate the air systems or assist anyone.
In a recovery you have time to get gear together, respond to a Command Post to get briefed and set in place a dive plan. In a rescue the victim just doesnt have a spare minute. Taking a minute here and a minute there can add up to a lot of wasted minutes turning a rescue into a recovery.
I am a firm believer that if youre going to be a RESCUE Team you need your gear with you any time you are available to respond to a call. It needs to be in a vehicle capable of running code which means some sort of government vehicle.
Even though someone is authorized to respond in a private vehicle, which a lot of volunteer firemen do, who is going to hang if they get into an accident responding to an emergency call? Your insurance company may just tell you to go take a flying leap.
There are a lot of issues with any kind of Dive Team but one of the most dangerous things we do is respond to the call. So sit back and evaluate what you really need to do the job as safely as possible.
We are fortunate as we have about anything we need including what might be called a mobile hotel from Disaster Services. But one of the best advancements the team ever made was go to having our gear in our patrol cars, trucks or SUVs 24-7-365. Before that we were called a Rescue Team but in reality we were a Recovery Team.
Gary D.
