Crews with Lethbridge Fire & Emergency Services take part in water rescue training. (Lethbridge News Now).

By David Opinko and Brandyn Montgomery

Lethbridge Fire & Emergency crews undertake extensive water rescue training exercises

Jun 20, 2019 | 4:09 PM

LETHBRIDGE, AB – Emergency responders in Lethbridge are taking part in four days of water rescue training on the Old Man River.

Water Rescue Team Lead Brendon Pyne says they have trained in still water in the past, but they needed some extra training for rescues in fast currents.

“It’s a completely different technique than diving in still water, so we were applying still-diving to moving water. We’re now, with what we’re being trained on today, we know to be diving in moving water we need to adjust our training and our search technique.”

Pyne says the need for this kind of training was evident after they attempted to rescue a 14-year-old boy from the Old Man River last summer, adding that the fast flows at the time added to the difficulty of their search.

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Andrea Zaferes with Lifeguard Systems was called in to help out with the exercises.

The training includes things like how to interview witnesses, calculating how an object in moving water would be carried, continuously taking the diver’s breathing rates, ensuring all of their equipment is properly secured, and other “tiny little details” that are important in search efforts.

Zaferes says she is very impressed with how the team has fared over the four-day course.

“We train hundreds of teams all over the world and they’re definitely in our top 10 if not our top five, and that says a lot. They’re attitude is incredible, you know, you just ask them, OK we need to do this and boom it’s done, you know, there’s no whininess, just boom, they get it done. They’re really observant and they work as a team.”

For Adam Perrett, this was his first time taking part in a diving exercise like this.

“The first time I’ve ever black water dived or dark water dived like this was three days ago. It’s quite different than anything else I’ve ever done. I’ve done some rec diving down in the Caribbean where you can see everything and it’s nice and warm water and you come up here and it’s completely completely different where you can barely see two inches in front of your face so you really run into things when you’re looking for them.”

Now, however, Perrett says he is fully confident in his abilities to enter any body of water and do what needs to be done.