Kuty,

As a member of a Volunteer Fire Dept. dive team that was recently disbanded
due to what our administration called a "lack of training" even-though we
were for the most part following their SOP's.  Dive teams (especially
volunteer) are a hard thing to organize and keep operational. Everyone has a
life outside of the team and for alot of us time is a commodity. Giving up
several nights or days a month is difficult. I'm not sure what your training
guidelines or SOP's require but ours were only 12 dives per year and some
people had a hard time meeting that. While others like myself average at
least 12 dives per month.

The team was recently privatized and I'm not sure if I'll continue with it
or not.

Probably the most important thing is to develop minimum training standards
and SOP's and get leadership who will stick to them.  Otherwise accidents
can and may happen.

From what I gathered from your scenario this was a recovery from the start,
as is about 99 percent of dive/rescue-recovery.  With this in mind if the
passenger was trapped enough that it took a half hour to extricate him why
bother.  Just recover him with the pilot when the plane is recovered.  Why
subject your team to the stress of dealing with the situation anymore than
you have to. Generally, at least in the US the investigators would probably
rather you left him in the plane.

As for you "I wish I'd been called" statement. My last rescue/recovery was a
7 y/o and his mother who had been under the ice for about 30-45 minutes. I
found the child after about 5 minutes of searching. He was immediately flown
to the hospital and pronounced about 2 hrs later. Due to the time and
darkness we decided that risking our people to recover the mother under ice
in the dark was not reasonable.  We went back the next morning and recovered
the mother.  Let me tell you I'm glad we were able to make an attempt to
save this child's life. But, I'M NOT GLAD, I was called.  These experiences
are things you never forget, I still have this picture of the child laying
on the bottom in my mind. Incidents like these can really wear on a person.
As a Volunteer Firefighter/EMT, I know how frustrating it is to listen to an
incident on the radio when dispatch is screwed up and you weren't called
when you should have been.

I don't know if you have them there but in the state's we have Critical
Incident Stress Debriefings (CISD). This is where after these kind of
incidents, everyone who was involved is invited to sit down an discuss their
feelings. These were developed after Emergency Response people were starting
to burnout due to dealing with death and destruction day in and day out.
Anyone involved in the incident can request the CISD if one isn't
automatically scheduled.  I recommend attending.

Ok Ok, enough rambling my bottom line is when you're called go, but, when
it's not your turn don't sweat it.

Dave Mitchell
Juneau, Alaska