Career Fire Fighter Drowns While Conducting Training Dive – New Hampshire

Details

• Personal Author:
  Oerter, Bruce ; McFall, Mark F.
• Corporate Authors:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. Fire Fighter Fatality Investigation and Prevention Program (FFFIPP)
• Description:
  Death in the Line of Duty…a Summary of a NIOSH Fire Fighter Fatality Investigation
  
  On March 11, 2004, a 43-year-old male career fire fighter drowned while training for fire department dive rescue operations. The victim was diving with another dive rescue team member in a large, partially ice-covered lake when, after his partner lost visual track of him, the victim failed to surface. The dive partner notified authorities through a pedestrian and a commercial dock attendant while he continued searching from the land docks and parking area. Multiple governmental agencies and private commercial divers conducted an organized search for the missing diver, but the victim's body was not found or recovered until the next day. He was pronounced dead on-scene. NIOSH Investigators concluded that, to minimize the risk of similar occurrences, fire departments should: 1. ensure that an experienced backup diver, a safety boat, extra air tanks, and a medical unit is on the scene of all training dives
  
  and, 2. ensure that Standard Operating Guidelines (SOG's) establish and enforce separate but parallel diver training guidelines along with emergency rescue diving guidelines.
  
  
• Subjects:
  Accident Prevention Accidents Accidents, Occupational Firefighters Occupational Health Safety Safety Management Staff Development
• Keywords:
  Accident-analysis Accident-prevention Divers Diving Diving-equipment Injuries Injury-prevention OSHA Region 9 Safety-practices Safety-programs Self-contained-underwater-breathing-apparatus Training Traumatic-injuries

  More +
• FACE - Firefighter:
  Cause of Death: Trauma ; Training: Scuba Diving ; Water: Scuba Diving
• Series:
  Fire Fighter Fatality Investigation and Prevention Program (FFFIPP)
• Subseries:
  Death in the Line of Duty Report
• DOI:
  https://doi.org/10.26616/NIOSHFFFACEF200436
• Publisher:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Document Type:
  Text
• Genre:
  Field Study ; Report
• Place as Subject:
  New Hampshire ; OSHA Region 1
• CIO:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
• Division:
  DSR - Division of Safety Research
• Topic:
  Workplace Safety & Health
• Location:
  North America
• Pages in Document:
  1-5
• NIOSHTIC Number:
  nn:20027589
• NTIS Accession Number:
  PB2005-107570
• Citation:
  Morgantown, WV: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, FACE F2004-36, 2005 Jul ; 1-5
• Federal Fiscal Year:
  2005
• Peer Reviewed:
  False
• NAICS and SIC Codes:
  92 - Public Administration - (NAICS)
• Start Date:
  2004/03/11
• Collection(s):
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:32234e664141cefd7dc21d225a1f47e2d703a78c1a268426a43dbbca4763fe626294c65a3ab7dce0a46463c2863a47d10a04b0973eb6b93b49db71b368033c83
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/163721/cdc_163721_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 828.58 KB ]