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Its called "AHJ" Authority Having Jurisdiction. Be you private or public the governing body of the municipality has the overall responsablitity for operations. I personaly doubt that they would be willing to take on the liability of a group of well meaning divers.
I still enjoy sport diving But honestly it is completly different than Public Saftey Diving. I feel that if you don't enjoy diving period you wont last very long as a PSD. I believe there are statistics to back that up but I can't find them right now. From reading other threads on this board about safety levels and safety comforts. The Average Recreational Diver has no business being in a zero viz entanglement hazard. Even a really good rec diver would scratch a crappy viz dive, thats part of what makes him a good diver. Im sure Im not the only one to encounter a snow fence in zero viz. or a fallen tree. In a perfect world with good viz and a smooth bottom anybody that can stomach the site can recover a body. Unfortanatly this is not a perfect world.There is I think a disctintion bewtween dedicated professional PSD teams that work hard and dive often to develop and maintain skills. At the other extreme are the groups of FD and PD ofiicers whio have open water certs and soem PSD training who are doing well to dive 12 times per year to meet minimum cert/currency requirements, who do not dive at all or dive very little in their off duty hours (ie: they are not divers) and who often view participation on the PSD team as more or less a merit badge or resume filler.
What can I say? I'm a practical guy. I don't see the point in spending thousands of dollars for a box to put a body in a cemetery either. Of course, if someone wants to spent their OWN money - that's up to them. But it shouldn't fall to the tax payers, that's for sure. Speaking for myself, I sure hope that when the time comes, my wife has the sense to do something more productive with her money than to spend a bunch of it on a funeral for me.NudeDiver, What can I say but Yikes!!! Not sure how anyone could say the things you did. Whle I agree with bridgediver that body recover is not always something that must be done all efforts should be made to attept body recovery as long as it does not put PSD at unecessary risk. It is hard to explain but it is so very important to all those involved. Not just the victims family but for the divers as well.
it doesn't take as much money to fund divers who have their own equipment!