Wendy Robinson, Executive Director, San Diego Fire Rescue Foundation
City of San Diego Lifeguard Service has new rescue and recovery tools with the donation of two Piranha P1 Scooters by the San Diego Fire Rescue Foundation. The underwater scooters will allow divers and dive rescue specialists to conserve energy and spend more time in the water before surfacing to rest or change SCUBA tanks.
San Diego Lifeguards are renowned and respected for their expertise needed to perform life-saving work with up to 10,000 annual rescues on 24 miles of ocean beaches, from Black’s Beach to Ocean Beach, and 17 miles of Mission Bay shoreline. Lifeguards also respond to underwater search, rescue and recovery calls at nine lakes up to 45 miles outside of San Diego’s city limits.
These calls require the special skills of the lifeguard divers. If there is a suspected drowning, the San Diego Lifeguard dive rescue specialists and advanced divers respond quickly and search well beyond the area where the person was last seen. They work as a team, searching in precise patterns. Swimming against a current or at a depth, requires strength and determination. Without special equipment, they can quickly expend the compressed air in their SCUBA tanks and exhaust themselves. It is an operation, like so many in public safety, where time is of the essence.
That’s where the Piranha P1 “Dive Scooter” can make an enormous difference. The lightweight, propeller-driven scooter can pull a diver faster and farther than they can swim alone. With a handle on top and a strap that goes around the diver’s waist, the battery-operated scooter lets the divers conserve their strength and spend more time in the water before replacing their SCUBA tanks. The P1 weighs just 25 pounds and can cover nearly three and a half miles at cruising speed. It will run for two and a half hours on a single set of batteries.
Whether it is a lake or an unguarded section of beach, the objective is the same; locate and recover the victim as quickly as possible. The Piranha P1 Scooter can take a giant step toward that end.
This article was originally published on the San Diego Fire Rescue Foundation blog, read full article here:
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