HOLLAND, Mich. – The difference between a water rescue and drowning recovery can be a matter of seconds.
Over the weekend of Friday to Sunday, July 19- 21, the U.S. Coast Guard was called to help 10 different people on Lake Michigan. They were able to rescue four, while two others died on the lake.
Sgt. Cal Keuning, a member of the Ottawa County dive team for nine years, said that when he gets a call, “things can be chaotic. You have family members that are going to be emotional and you have to communicate with them, tell them what is going on. Don’t leave them in the dark.”
To assist searches, Sgt. Keuning said his dive team has an HD side sonar, which he can drag behind a boat and search more than 100 feet to the left and right, giving him a picture of the area at the bottom of the lake.
“It’s like an ultrasound,” he said. “I can measure length and see how long something is that I am looking at.” It also gives the dive team a more accurate and faster way to search an area.
“From that, we then go to our underwater robot, which would be on another boat, maybe on the pier,” Sgt. Keuning said. The underwater robot can even keep divers out of the danger. “We can just throw this right down to the target, drive up to it, look at with the video camera, and it will tell me what I am looking at.”
One thing that is not at the dive team’s disposal is a tool to cope with the discoveries that the dive team inevitably encounter.
