Public Safety and Law enforcement officers are often put in hazardous situations due to their line of work, and they may find themselves at the bottom of one of the 102 lakes in Kosciusko County. With safety being top priority, Lieutenant Don Wiesehan and Sheriff Aaron Rovenstine worked to bring Dive International trainer John Soderberg to Warsaw. Soderberg traveled from Pittsburg to Warsaw to teach 20 participants a specific Dive Rescue 1 Course, part of a multi-piece program. All of the participants had previous dive training. Present were members of Warsaw Police Department, Warsaw Fire Department, Kosciusko County Sheriff’s Department, as well an officer from Marion Police Department and others from Detroit. According to Soderberg, diving in lakes and rivers is just as dangerous if not more than firefighting. Being in these lakes that are littered with trees and other debris while in full dive gear, often with zero visibility, especially at night, and a very limited time to work due to oxygen psi, is an unstable environment that can easily debilitate the diver. While many people have been trained in proper diving techniques, safety diving is a different process that has to be methodical, observed, and detailed to ensure that divers are safe and are able to find their target effectively, whether that is a evidence in a crime, a vehicle, or a body. Wiesehan said that this event was the first like it in county history. The three day training started on Wednesday with classroom instructions and then ended with a dive in a local pool so that they could clearly see the proper techniques. The divers found themselves at the bottom Hidden Lake in Warsaw running multiple practice procedures at depths as much as 25 ft. Friday was the day where all their hard work came to fruition as the participants ran real-time scenarios attempting to retrieve a mannequin from the bottom of the lake. The divers went out one at a time with a safety diver as a backup and another diver 90 percent dressed and ready to go out. The safety diver did have to retrieve the main diver at one point due as he got tangled in his own line and a lack of oxygen. With as many bodies of water that Kosciusko has as well as recent drownings, training like this can make a huge difference in water safety.
