Dive team comes to aid when lives are at stake

By Jamie Rogers
Morning News Reporter
Published: May 30, 2008

HARTSVILLE — Everyone knows the volunteer members of the Hartsville Rescue Squad administer life-saving care to those on dry land.
But it’s a lesser-known fact that the 23-person squad has a small group of divers who are ready at a moment’s notice to perform water rescues and recoveries, Hartsville Rescue Squad member Wayne Astralla said.
In addition to being an EMT, Astralla and five other members of the squad are certified divers who are qualified to respond to calls anywhere in the Palmetto State.
With every incident to which they respond, rescue volunteers hope a life can be saved. But when the dive team is summoned to a scene, that almost always means it’s too late, Astralla said.
“Once somebody sees them in the water, and they’re already drowning, there’s not too much we can do unless we’re already there,” he said. “From the time somebody calls 911 and we get on scene, eight or 10 minutes has already passed.”
This was the case May 21, when the divers responded to a small pond in Chesterfield where two fishermen died after falling into the water.
One of the bodies was recovered immediately, but divers were called to locate the body of the second man.
Jessica Jones, a Hartsville diver who earned her certification in December, said the Chesterfield incident was her first recovery dive.
“We were actually in the water two hours. We did what we could,” she said. “The water was black and you could only see right in front of you and maybe down to your neck.”
When divers finally pulled 67-year-old Jessie Dixon’s body from the water, Jones said, she was relieved that authorities had kept family members and other spectators away from the pond.
“People just don’t need to see that,” she said. “It was a long, drawn-out process.”
Divers used buoys and ropes to make a grid of the search area so everyone involved would understand what areas had been covered, Jones said.
Still, recovering a body can be a difficult task for divers because of the low visibility, Astralla said.
“It’s not something that the average person would want to do. You can’t see but 6 inches to 3 feet in front of you,” he said. “When you’re down there at the bottom of the lake, you run into (the bodies) and they’re right there in your face. It’ll scare you sometimes, but you do what you got to do.”
In addition to daily medical calls, members of the rescue squad generally respond to about two recovery dive calls every year— some from as far away as Tennessee and Georgia, Astralla said.
“Anybody that knows how to get in touch with us, or needs divers, they’ll call us and we’ll go where we are needed,” he said.