Got a New job in the unit yesterday

[Greg D.]

Well I lost one and gained another yesterday. I gave up the assistant equipment officer job to become the training officer for the unit. Which is good and bad.... being an equipment officer let me get at all the new gear but being the training officer will allow me to point the unit in the direction that I think it needs to go as far as training is concerned...... MORE MORE MORE We have a training SOP that has been loosely followed as far as I'm concerned in the past few years and its time to get it back on track! any Ideas on how to motivate volunteers to be at all the training missions? anyway I am meeting with the SAR presidente tomorrow to put together a schedule for the next few months. We will have to start with the state mandated training, and probably hit on rope rescue in the first couple months, but starting in April we need to get polished up on our water skills before the busy season hits.

 

[Kayla]

Congrats on the new title!! Good luck with motivation, if you find something that just works amazing, let me know, ok?? There are a few of us that keep motivated and keep going.. and it feels like everyone else kind of just drags their feet. Take care of yourself out there!

 

[Gary D.]

Greg, those are the two best positions on the team. They are also the ones that also carry the most responsibility.

Some will argue and say the team leader has the most but think about it. Any single member can override a decision made by the team leader. The leader is more of an organizer and the source for suggestions. If any of those suggestions don’t meet with the divers or teams satisfaction he gets overridden. The team leader doesn’t even have to be a diver, he’s a figurehead that catches the flack.

The equipment guy, who should be the same guy as the safety officer and better know his stuff. He has to know what to use, when to use it and how it should be used. Then at a glance know if it’s being used or worn properly. Then there is maintenance, which can cause blood pressure increases. On a team like mine where the gear is mostly uniform that is an easy task. But on a team like yours and so many others it gets more taxing due to the gear mix, you need to know about all of it.

Other safety officers should be assigned to various operations but the ultimate responsibility of safety officer should be the equipment guy. When taken care of properly you should never have a failure.

Training officer: Tough position. Not only do you have to come up with training ideas but you have to have ideas that fit the teams needs. It would be a waste of time for my team to train for heavy surf. The closest we get to that is a big boat wake. Another waste of time and resources would be training a team in Florida for high altitude diving. Man we have bridges here higher than the highest point in flats ville.

Once you get a good idea that fits the needs you need to fit it into everyone’s schedules. If they can’t make the training everything else is kind of moot.

Then it has to fit within the budget. I have seen some of the best-laid out training, scheduled to best fit everyone, get shot down by the lack of George Washington’s.

Another demanding position of the training officer is to keep tract of everyone’s qualifications, abilities, past training and attitude.

All of us have our daily attitude, pressures on attitude, things are going to crap attitude among others. You should be able to recognize what their attitude is for the situation you are in. If they are out of their normal range find out why. Is it nerves, fear, uneasiness, illness or my pet peeve Peer Pressure. Do they need more training? Bottom time? Dry docked?

That is a big responsibility I know you will take on with your heart in it and do a good job. Your first duty is to deliver Dan’s trailer to our department so we can use it for training. What time should I expect you?

Congrats

Gary D.

 

[leam]

As a newbie I can assure you more training is on my mind.

Yet I see the same issue here, low turnout for most meetings and training sessions. For me some things that would help is to regularly schedule training in advanced and block things together. For example, we had a 30 minute Blood Borne Pathogen video, mandatory. For three of us newbies it's 35 minutes to drive to the station. I'd prefer a regular Thursday night thing where we have 3-4 hours of training that I can schedule for on a regular basis. Lump in several classes, come in with energy and run them, and make it fun. If it's just "something we gotta watch" and we spend more time jawing about problems at the local fast food place and not training, you're wasting my time and making me wonder how enthusiastic I should be for the next training.

I did training for the Disaster Response team in the military. We had to do things like don chem gear masks in 9 seconds, etc. Pit one side of the room against the other, guys against girls, old farts against newbies, or whatever. Start on time, give short but frequent breaks. Explain the objectives, chase them with energy, and congratulate the students when they make it. You can either stand behind the podium and lecture or be glad your boss didn't see you walking on the tables.

ciao!

leam

 

[Jason Ooi]

congratulation new task new training new challenge

 

[Greg D.]

Greg, those are the two best positions on the team. They are also the ones that also carry the most responsibility.

Some will argue and say the team leader has the most but think about it. Any single member can override a decision made by the team leader. The leader is more of an organizer and the source for suggestions. If any of those suggestions don’t meet with the divers or teams satisfaction he gets overridden. The team leader doesn’t even have to be a diver, he’s a figurehead that catches the flack.

The equipment guy, who should be the same guy as the safety officer and better know his stuff. He has to know what to use, when to use it and how it should be used. Then at a glance know if it’s being used or worn properly. Then there is maintenance, which can cause blood pressure increases. On a team like mine where the gear is mostly uniform that is an easy task. But on a team like yours and so many others it gets more taxing due to the gear mix, you need to know about all of it.

Other safety officers should be assigned to various operations but the ultimate responsibility of safety officer should be the equipment guy. When taken care of properly you should never have a failure.

Training officer: Tough position. Not only do you have to come up with training ideas but you have to have ideas that fit the teams needs. It would be a waste of time for my team to train for heavy surf. The closest we get to that is a big boat wake. Another waste of time and resources would be training a team in Florida for high altitude diving. Man we have bridges here higher than the highest point in flats ville.

Once you get a good idea that fits the needs you need to fit it into everyone’s schedules. If they can’t make the training everything else is kind of moot.

Then it has to fit within the budget. I have seen some of the best-laid out training, scheduled to best fit everyone, get shot down by the lack of George Washington’s.

Another demanding position of the training officer is to keep tract of everyone’s qualifications, abilities, past training and attitude.

All of us have our daily attitude, pressures on attitude, things are going to crap attitude among others. You should be able to recognize what their attitude is for the situation you are in. If they are out of their normal range find out why. Is it nerves, fear, uneasiness, illness or my pet peeve Peer Pressure. Do they need more training? Bottom time? Dry docked?

That is a big responsibility I know you will take on with your heart in it and do a good job. Your first duty is to deliver Dan’s trailer to our department so we can use it for training. What time should I expect you?

Congrats

Gary D.

Gonna met today with the team leader, he informed me that the only real training records are the sign in sheets that we have at the begining of our training and that we should have more detailed documentation. I put together a spreadsheet to keep track of our yearly mandated training and dives for each guy/gal in the unit. I will also be getting last years training and breaking it down by member. That way we can see where we need the help.

How often do your divers train? We have 9 training days a year... I'd like to see that at at least 12.

As far as the Dan's trailer goes, I'm sure he won't miss it as the dirty son f a gun is in Bon Aire for the next two weeks diving his arse off How bout a swap? His trailer for one of your Rigid hull inflatables

 

[Greg D.]

Congrats on the new title!! Good luck with motivation, if you find something that just works amazing, let me know, ok?? There are a few of us that keep motivated and keep going.. and it feels like everyone else kind of just drags their feet. Take care of yourself out there!

Well for starters training is MANDATORY per our SOP and that is the fist place I am going to start. Just not showing up is not an excuse. But I also want to make the training sessions challenging and fun so people WANT to show up and participate! It will be announced in the next meeting of my appointment as training officer so I will give a little shpeil and see how things go from there!

 

[Gary D.]

Gonna met today with the team leader, he informed me that the only real training records are the sign in sheets that we have at the begining of our training and that we should have more detailed documentation. I put together a spreadsheet to keep track of our yearly mandated training and dives for each guy/gal in the unit. I will also be getting last years training and breaking it down by member. That way we can see where we need the help.

How often do your divers train? We have 9 training days a year... I'd like to see that at at least 12.

As far as the Dan's trailer goes, I'm sure he won't miss it as the dirty son f a gun is in Bon Aire for the next two weeks diving his arse off How bout a swap? His trailer for one of your Rigid hull inflatables

Records are important. No matter how good a system one has it can always be better.

We plan for and try to get in 24 training dives a year.

We only have two RHI's so I think they might miss one.

Try and let the team members pick out some of the training and even let them do the research and run it. That way they feel like they are more a part of the team and get some respect as to how tough a job that can be.

Bring your work truck to the trainings. I'll bet everyone shows up, including us.

Gary D.

 

[Greg D.]

Well the unit got a taste of the new training officer today Well we never had a chance to get in our ice training this year because by the time we had the classroom part all our Ice was gone. Well it got real cold around here the last few days, and we even got some ice forming on the lake..... Well I mentioned it to our team leader and hmm whamo we had a call out.

Last week when we did our ice diving training, Marv and I discussed how we should have done out Ice rescue training when we HAD ice, in the discussion we talked about just calling the team out for training next time we got Ice and not let them know it was a drill..... sneaky eh

Well as
I said I went to talk all things training with the Team leader "Marv" over breakfast and I mentioned to him that we had new Ice forming and that we should go take a look. on goes the dry suit and PFD Tie a rope to me and we were in business. the ice was about and inch an a half thick once you got out a ways. Thick enough to stand on but not thick enough to jump on..... for very long anyways

The page went out at 13:35 and the team was on scene at 13:44, Nine minute response time not bad considering they had to drive to and pick up the vehicles. 20 minutes later I was rescued and on shore. Not a very good rescue time at all but we encountered some problems in the mix, The team had a little difficulty getting to me as the ice I rolled out on was all cracked up from me already being on it, and the first to suit up was a big guy that couldn't stay on top of the ice. and anyone who has ever been in an ice rescue suit knows that you are not very agile in them. the pulled him back in and sent another man out in a dry suit that had no problem getting to me and wrapping a rope around me. from the look on his face ( completely enthused ab out being there) he was ready to wrap the rope around my neck

We did three more "rescues" and called it a day. All in all a great day, learned some valuable lessons, and we also learned that we need a better system for thin ice rescues... I just so happened to have heard of the rescue alive system.... I believe we will be getting one soon

 

[Gary D.]

Well the unit got a taste of the new training officer today Well we never had a chance to get in our ice training this year because by the time we had the classroom part all our Ice was gone. Well it got real cold around here the last few days, and we even got some ice forming on the lake..... Well I mentioned it to our team leader and hmm whamo we had a call out.

Last week when we did our ice diving training, Marv and I discussed how we should have done out Ice rescue training when we HAD ice, in the discussion we talked about just calling the team out for training next time we got Ice and not let them know it was a drill..... sneaky eh

Well as
I said I went to talk all things training with the Team leader "Marv" over breakfast and I mentioned to him that we had new Ice forming and that we should go take a look. on goes the dry suit and PFD Tie a rope to me and we were in business. the ice was about and inch an a half thick once you got out a ways. Thick enough to stand on but not thick enough to jump on..... for very long anyways

The page went out at 13:35 and the team was on scene at 13:44, Nine minute response time not bad considering they had to drive to and pick up the vehicles. 20 minutes later I was rescued and on shore. Not a very good rescue time at all but we encountered some problems in the mix, The team had a little difficulty getting to me as the ice I rolled out on was all cracked up from me already being on it, and the first to suit up was a big guy that couldn't stay on top of the ice. and anyone who has ever been in an ice rescue suit knows that you are not very agile in them. the pulled him back in and sent another man out in a dry suit that had no problem getting to me and wrapping a rope around me. from the look on his face ( completely enthused ab out being there) he was ready to wrap the rope around my neck

We did three more "rescues" and called it a day. All in all a great day, learned some valuable lessons, and we also learned that we need a better system for thin ice rescues... I just so happened to have heard of the rescue alive system.... I believe we will be getting one soon

Hehehehe Those are so much fun.

Don't buy a Rescue Alive without getting with our team. One of our Lt.'s is a dealer so you might get a super price. We don't because we can't buy from him. They call it a conflict of interest.

I don't know how many we have around the county right now but at the last real callout 3 were on scene that I didn't even know were out there.

They also make good dive platforms.

Now, just don't burn them out.

Gary D.