Public safety divers, conduct a variety of important and potentially stressful underwater tasks – including rescue, evidence and body recovery, underwater inspections and more – for local communities. Public safety divers are typically in law enforcement, fire departments or emergency services and couple their job experience with specialized dive training to carry out these underwater activities in a safe, efficient manner.
To attend this program, you must be:
Please note that only individuals employed in fields such as law enforcement, fire suppression and emergency services are qualified to take our program. This program lays out an excellent foundation for dive team members with little or no experience but will also work well for experienced divers wanting to refresh basic skills and learn new public safety diving techniques.
The PADI Public Safety Diver Program familiarizes divers with the skills, knowledge, planning, organization, procedures, techniques and hazards of public safety diving. It establishes a solid public safety diving foundation and includes basic rescue skills (both surface and underwater), knot tying, search techniques, victim recovery, tender responsibilities, communications and rescue techniques for a distressed public safety diver. The program covers several key topics that include:
Water skills include a variety of common, useful search patterns as well as team diving roles as primary diver, rescue diver, tender, safety diver and supervisor. The program uses proven field techniques, and both meets and addresses important National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) guidelines found in NFPA 1006 and 1670.
The PADI Public Safety Diver Surface Support Specialist Program is run in conjunction with the PADI Public Safety Diver Program. It involves hands on training to familiarize public safety support staff with the skills, knowledge and techniques needed to support divers during a public safety operation. Participants will be exposed to the use of special procedures, equipment, scene handling, communication procedures, basic public safety diving search and rescue techniques, emergency procedures and documentation requirements. There is no diving experience required and is open to non-divers. Participants must be affiliation or employment with a public safety dive team. They must have EFR Primary and Secondary Care (or equivalent CPR and first aid) training within the past 24 months.
Our program is conducted over three days, using a combination of:
Confined water sessions may be added to introduce new skills or equipment to the class. The participant must demonstrate accurate and adequate knowledge and performance of all skills fluidly with little difficulty, in a manner that demonstrates minimal or no stress during the open water dives.
Class size is limited to 20 divers and 10 tenders. For any number of divers less than 20, the same number of tenders can replace them. All divers must show certification cards and some type of dive log book upon our arrival.
