pantheraba
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I made my first official PSD dive last week.
I got a call about 8 pm last Thur. night (last week) to be on standby for a Dive Team (DT) mission. The story was that a girl had jumped off the Dog River Reservoir bridge, a pretty deserted bridge in our county with nothing real close to it...no houses, business just a bridge on a fairly busy wooded road...she was alone, no vehicles nearby. A man drove across the bridge about 7:45 pm (I think, not real sure of first report time) and saw her in the middle of the bridge...she stepped onto the side of the bridge as he drove past. In his rear view mirror he saw her jump...it shocked him enough that he turned around to check on her...no evidence of her anywhere. It is about a 20 foot drop to the water which varies from 10-30 feet deep.
He called 911 and they called our DT leader. I got the official "its for real" call about 8:15 and arrived at the site about 9:00pm...some of the guys were already out in the dive boat. Fire and police were all over the bridge directing traffic. Our team leader made one dive at the last seen point, it got dark and they called off operations for the night.
We met on site again next AM at 9:00 and five of us went out on search in the county EMA boat. We used sonar to search the area under the bridge and probably 60 feet on both sides of the bridge. We ID’d two suspicious objects, body size. Another diver checked the first site. I was the back up diver...he searched the area, no victim.
When we had first passed over the second site, we had thrown out a marker buoy but it did not deploy correctly (it partially uncoiled and then sank). I searched the second site...we had already “re-sonared” the second site but no did not see again the suspicious object. The main object for searching the second site was to see if we could recover the buoy. Good fortune smiled on us...I made 2-3 arc patterns in the mud (2 tugs, stop, change direction) and my tether line snagged the submerged buoy line and we recovered it.
We used team members on the bridge and shot azimuths to land objects to keep our boat paths on track.
No one has yet filed a missing person report so we still don’t know what happened.
A few pictures are at
Dog River Reservoir Search - GaryLayton's Photos
It was my first experience with sonar...it seems like a very useful tool.
No picts of divers...I was too busy gearing up, etc. to snap picts.
I got a call about 8 pm last Thur. night (last week) to be on standby for a Dive Team (DT) mission. The story was that a girl had jumped off the Dog River Reservoir bridge, a pretty deserted bridge in our county with nothing real close to it...no houses, business just a bridge on a fairly busy wooded road...she was alone, no vehicles nearby. A man drove across the bridge about 7:45 pm (I think, not real sure of first report time) and saw her in the middle of the bridge...she stepped onto the side of the bridge as he drove past. In his rear view mirror he saw her jump...it shocked him enough that he turned around to check on her...no evidence of her anywhere. It is about a 20 foot drop to the water which varies from 10-30 feet deep.
He called 911 and they called our DT leader. I got the official "its for real" call about 8:15 and arrived at the site about 9:00pm...some of the guys were already out in the dive boat. Fire and police were all over the bridge directing traffic. Our team leader made one dive at the last seen point, it got dark and they called off operations for the night.
We met on site again next AM at 9:00 and five of us went out on search in the county EMA boat. We used sonar to search the area under the bridge and probably 60 feet on both sides of the bridge. We ID’d two suspicious objects, body size. Another diver checked the first site. I was the back up diver...he searched the area, no victim.
When we had first passed over the second site, we had thrown out a marker buoy but it did not deploy correctly (it partially uncoiled and then sank). I searched the second site...we had already “re-sonared” the second site but no did not see again the suspicious object. The main object for searching the second site was to see if we could recover the buoy. Good fortune smiled on us...I made 2-3 arc patterns in the mud (2 tugs, stop, change direction) and my tether line snagged the submerged buoy line and we recovered it.
We used team members on the bridge and shot azimuths to land objects to keep our boat paths on track.
No one has yet filed a missing person report so we still don’t know what happened.
A few pictures are at
Dog River Reservoir Search - GaryLayton's Photos
It was my first experience with sonar...it seems like a very useful tool.
No picts of divers...I was too busy gearing up, etc. to snap picts.
