I haven’t done a blog for a while as I’ve just been so busy.  Keeping up with operational duties and stuff inside the office is a juggling act at the best of times.  Also it’s not always right for me to tweet or blog about jobs that we do -either out of sensitivity for family and friends or for confidentiality issues if it’s a crime job.  

This week started off with us being called out to recover the body of a man who had drowned and it reminded me how tragic it is when we go to find a family’s loved one.  

About this time last year I did a blog called Early Festive Greetings. My Mum (who used to read my blogs at the time) rang me up and told me it was miserable.  No one likes to be told off by their Mum at aged 35 so I read it back to myself and decided actually she was right.  I suppose any excuse that I may have is that at this time of year I become more reflective, the amount of body recoveries we do usually increases and this makes me a bit sad and eager to continue to do what I can to reduce such incidents.

I know I’m a small person - both in stature and significance (in the grand scheme of things!) but I’m a trier and I’m stubborn and this means I have not stopped thinking about and doing what I can to make some changes.

In 2009 I started a project about body recoveries from water which is still ongoing.  This was aimed at identifying where bodies may end up if we know an entry point.  It deals with the variables of the person themselves (like age, weight, height and clothing) and also the water conditions (flow, depth, temperature, obstructions etc..).  The main aim is to reduce search time and get the body back for the next of kin as soon as possible but as I designed the form I entered some data fields which could be used to try and prevent incidents occurring in the future.  I didn’t know quite how I would turn this data into public safety information at the time so it was a stroke of luck when some years later I had a chance telephone conversation with Kirsten (see The Start of Something Good?) who is a contributor on the National Water Safety Forum.

Since my recent initial meeting with Kirsten and the other agencies who contribute, I have given over all my data (collected so far) for entry onto the Water Incident Database and have established that I may be able to have access to the Database to add further incidents as they occur.  I have been able to get an invitation to a National Police Dive and Marine meeting and I presented an argument there for the police nationally contributing to the Database and Forum (if they do not already do so), which will mean greater liaison and contributions from all concerned.

I’m excited to see how this all turns out.  As usual I am full of optimism and am buoyed by meeting a bunch of people who want the same thing.  Miserable blogs may not work at preventing accidents but there is always another way and I look forward to seeing how it all pans out…

We are always being asked by people what we can see when we go diving.  It’s hard to explain but I’ll try and describe it to you in this blog.  Last week I dived with an underwater camera, my aim was to try and show you what we see in pictures because a video is better than any way that I may be able to explain it. You can see the short video explaining about the underwater camera here:

What we can see varies depending on where you are but mainly we don’t get to see anything and we call this diving in ‘zero vis’.  Most of our police diving is in inland waters; ponds, lakes and rivers where you bump into traffic cones, shopping trolleys, bins and other stuff.  Because of the fact that Sussex is mainly clay soil the water is quite often black to start with, occasionally we may go somewhere where you can see stuff when you first enter the water but as soon as we land on the bottom to begin our search the silt and sediment gets stirred up and that’s it, the rest is in darkness.  When I first joined the Unit I used to try and keep my eyes open when the clouds of silt were billowing around me, as sometimes I might glimpse the odd thing but it really hurts your eyes doing this so it’s best just to shut them and get on with it.  The worst visibility I ever had was the Military Canal in Rye, it was literally pitch black as soon as you went beneath the surface, I searched for and recovered a body that day.  The best I have had was at a quarry in Surrey, I was searching for and recovering a body that day as well, it was strange seeing the body under water and as I brought it up.  (Having just written that last sentance I think it’s strange that the best and worst visibility examples I have had are body recovery jobs….?!)

Another thing that people say is that it must be eerie searching under the water and then suddenly seeing the face of a dead body right in front of your mask, but honestly, you don’t generally see that, you just bump into the body and have to feel it to check it is what you’re looking for and personally I’d rather have it this way than have the lasting image of it in my head.  Of course I see bodies on the surface when we deal with the recovery but that’s a little different and you get used to all of it in time, as gruesome as it sounds. (To learn about how I felt when I dived for my first body you could read ‘My First Body’).

After making the explanatory video I dived using the underwater camera, you can see what I saw here:

My aim was to keep the camera with me throughout my dive but when I got to the bottom and it all went black I decided it wasn’t worth continuing filming. I didn’t want to lose the camera so I turned it off and sent it back up the shot line to the surface so I could continue with my search.  There is distant audio on the underwater camera, you can hear me talking to Critch on the surface through our communications system.

If you have anything you would like to know more about you can always contact me via our Twitter account, Flickr site or via email.  Sometimes I just have an idea in my head of what to blog about but I’m not always sure if it’s that interesting for you.  I enjoy writing to you through my blog though and if you tune in then thank you and I hope you enjoy it too.

I wrote this blog about a recent call out but didn’t manage to publish it.  It’s about a deployment we had a few weeks back:

Although we’re not paid to be on call we get called at home if any diving or other specialist jobs come in when we’re off duty.  If we’re available and can accommodate leaving whatever we’re doing at short notice then we report to work.  In the five years I’ve been on the Unit I have never known a time when we haven’t managed to get enough people together from the SSU to make up a dive team, as I have previously discussed it’s a sense of moral duty that drives us and pride that we can serve the community doing what we’re trained to do.

On Sunday I was lounging around at home having had a few measures of single malt the previous night when my mobile phone rang.  It was ‘Ops 1’ our Operations Inspector in the control room who told me that Surrey Police had requested us to come and dive in a lake after a man had gone missing, it was thought that he had gone into the lake as some clothes had been found on the bank.  I took the details and then rang round the Team to see who I could get to come out.  Jonathan was on a 10k ‘fun’ run and Arf was away visiting relatives but everyone else could get away from what they were doing and when I got to the Base with Paul and Rick, Moomin, Critch, Bret and Darran were already there.

We readied the vehicles and set off straight away, it took less than an hour to get to the scene and we were met by Surrey police officers and search and rescue teams from Surrey Fire Service who had been searching for the man since he had been reported missing and his clothes were found by the side of the lake.

As the dive supervisor I found out as much as I could about the circumstances.  It appeared the man had gone into the water to try and save his dog which had gone onto the ice.  I spoke to his close family member who was waiting at the scene and was desperate to know what we could do to help.  It was tragic, I felt so sad to speaking with his family member and hearing him take phone calls from other members of the family. It’s hard enough dealing with the actual job but when it’s personalised by finding out that the person who you have come to look for is a father, husband, brother and son then it makes it more challenging from a psychological point of view.

I discussed with the Fire Service what they had done and what their capabilities were to work with us.  We have the underwater search capability and work as a search and recovery unit but the fire service specialist units tend to work in the same environments as us so they understand the logistical and physical difficulties we encounter and work with us to support us as much as they can.

I chose Rick as the first diver and as he is new to the Unit and needs the experience of difficult jobs like this. Paul was standby diver and I chose an arch search pattern.  I made sure Rick was feeling alright about the task that he was about to undertake because he had not dived for a body before and I felt really nervous before my first time (see my first body).  Rick started diving and as he searched more and more of the area I felt anticipation that at any time he would call on the radio or signal on his lifeline “Five Bells” which would mean that he had found what he was looking for.

Sure enough after 40 minutes of searching in the water Rick called up over the radio.  You sort of get to a point where you’re in tune with stuff on a dive site and when a radio transmission comes up when it’s not expected (for example at the start or end of the jackstay) everyone goes quiet.  “Five bells” Rick reported and although it was sad because Rick had found the body I was relieved that the search was over.

Once we find a body in the water and are sure that life is extinct we search around it and make sure there are no issues to be aware of, then we await instructions from the supervisor and then when appropriate we bring it to the side and put it in a body bag near the surface.  We then recover it to the bank for the coroner, sometimes we search it to try and ascertain the circumstances of how it got to be there and once it is on dry land, has been given over to a police colleague and we have provided a written statement of the circumstances our search task has ended.

After this incident I went to speak to the family of the man and gave them as much information as they wanted about where he had been in the lake and what we had done.  I felt that it was something that they needed from me and I wanted to do whatever I could to help.  I got back to the van somewhat deflated but I made sure I had little time to mull over the sadness of the whole thing as I busied myself assisting Rick with his statement and make sure everyone was alright.

If you’ve read any of my earlier blogs or the small article I wrote about the SSU you will know some of the feelings that come with doing deployments like this.  I won’t dwell on them here, just as I try not to when I go to the jobs…

I’ve just got back from our current dive job, it’s only Thursday but it feels like the end of the week.  We’re diving in a lake for evidence relating to a serious crime, the lake isn’t very deep but it’s long and has taken a while.

The Team started diving there while I was in Dorset at an Olympics security meeting (some of us will be down there diving and on the boats to help keep the Games safe) so when I got back this week they were already in a routine.  The lake was iced up so badly that even a sledge hammer couldn’t smash through the surface and as a result things were delayed somewhat.  We take it in turns to be the dive supervisor at diving operations and Moomin was running this dive which means she has planned and run each day and doesn’t get to dive.

Usually we don’t have enough people to dive two of us at the same time as we always need someone ‘up top’ to act as standby diver but on Tuesday (my first day on the dive operation) there were seven of us, we dived two divers at once on a two diver jackstay pattern with one other person smashing the ice at the edge ahead of the divers so we didn’t get trapped under the ice.

Because of the travelling time and the fact that we have to disinfect and clean our equipment at the end of the day we have been doing longer days to get as much time in the water as possible and get the most out of the day.  We’ve been starting at 7AM and finishing about 6PM.  Carrying equipment around and diving takes it out of you so each evening by the time dinner has been cooked and eaten I’ve been pretty useless.

As a general rule we eat on the dive site and don’t stop for lunch but because of the long days and the fact that it’s just so cold we nominated a person each day to bring in hot food for the Team which we have kept warm in the dive lorry.  It’s been great, except for one day when everyone wasn’t 100% after one particular lunch (it would be unfair at this point to name the chef that day!)

Lots of people have come to speak to us while we’ve been there which has been nice, we’ve surprised and confused a few dogs as we have broken surface just as they have paused by the side of the lake and have had to explain to several little children what the concept of diving is as they have never seen it either.  People clearly struggle to work out why we would lie for up to 90 minutes on the bottom of a pond under ice with no visibility fingertip searching and come back and do it day after day.  I tell them that we are used to these things, we get by the best we can, we make it work and when I am down there I think about the victims of crimes and their families and how with the next sweep of my hand it would be wonderful to find what I am looking for.

(To see some pictures from this week click here).

As I check the contents of some boots that I haven’t worn for a while at the Base (we have a mouse problem and they are frequently found in such places) I was drawn to thinking about some of the animal encounters that we have had on the SSU over the years. I was pleased to think that it may make a fairly interesting topic for a blog as some of the ones I have written already are about the type of work that we do which is sometimes gloomy and the possibility of writing one that doesn’t mention death is quite an attractive one!

As you can imagine we end up in all sorts of situations - outdoors and indoors where we come up against unexpected interactions.  One memorable time was when I was diving in Chichester Canal following an assault where a phone with some evidence on was thrown in the water.  I was on my stomach on the bottom of the canal at around three meters with usual SSU visibility (black like you are in complete darkness) and was moving along the jackstay rather slowly (as there was lots of rubbish and a considerable amount of silt to search through).  I plunged my hand into the silt to feel around when I felt something in my hand, I still remember the shock I felt when I realised it was moving - a large eel slithered through my hands, out of the silt past my head and away up to the surface.  The rest of the SSU saw it appear on the surface.  I don’t mind admitting that it frightened the life out of me and I jumped a mile but luckily as I was under water on my own in nil visibility no one saw me. 

On another job we had to search a house where intelligence suggested that the man kept snakes.  We attended an early morning briefing at the police station and I noted that a snake expert was there to assist us which was rather reassuring.  He had come armed with a duvet and a couple of pillow cases in case of need and seemed to know what he was doing.  We turned up at the address to find that there were snakes in tanks everywhere - the largest of which were in huge purpose built areas in the shed.  I climbed up a ladder to look in one of the tanks and an 8 foot long python lunged at the glass as soon as my head appeared.  The python was wider than my thigh and was extremely aggressive.  The snake expert who was with us actually looked scared and at this point I knew it wasn’t good!  Obviously we needed to get into all the tanks to search them so it took six of us to get a very angry and large snake into the duvet cover.  Getting it back in the tank afterwards was twice as difficult as it had not enjoyed its trip outside of the tank in any way.

When we are searching countryside locations - maybe in the case of a missing person or evidence left from a crime we see so much wildlife including deer, stoats and badgers - really close up.  Quite often if we are wading in a pond we find lots of fish.  In a pond in Seaford we nearly got our fingers taken off by a snapping turtle who had been released there some time ago and had grown to mammoth proportions.  On a recent wade of the River Arun at high tide we were disturbed by a seal who came to see what we were doing and on the diving course in Newcastle you were often aware of another presence in the water and seals would be around your fins as you moved around.

Animal encounters - sometimes a hightlight in my day, sometimes a fright in my day.  There, I’ve done it.  I’ve left out the more sinister stories so have managed to do a whole blog and only mention death twice…

I have now got to the stage where I have written four blogs and some extra articles about myself and the Team.  Each blog I have written has flowed from my subconscious and I didn’t have to think too much about what I was writing as the words seemed to form themselves.  Today I looked back at the blogs and was a bit worried that they may be a bit ‘doom and gloom’.  I raised this concern with Christine Townsend the Multimedia Producer at HQ who is guiding me on the technical and creative use of social media in order to enable me to get across to you what it is really like to be me and do my job on the SSU.  Christine told me not to worry that I thought the content was not that cheerful as that is the reality of the sort of job I do and that is what I should get across in my writing.

Considering that the types of incidents we go to would definitely fall into the depressing category I am an extraordinarily happy and positive person who always sees the best in any given situation.   I have been made proud by my Team on the SSU and what we achieve together.  In everyday situations I can see that good people make up our communities and I will never let the frequency of times that I see human nature at it’s worst make me cynical.

Often in the face of adversity the best comes out of all of us.  I saw this at a diving job we went to last winter where two people from a very close community were drowned in a boating accident and we were called to recover the bodies.  We were in quite a remote place and I can honestly say that at times during this operation I’ve never been so cold in all my life. You tend to feel warmer in the water rather than ‘up top’ but the times when I feel most cold is when you have dived already and then have to sit as ‘standby diver’ on the surface ready to rescue your colleague who is diving after you.  Despite the fact that the community had been shattered over the loss of their loved ones they rallied round and brought us hot drinks, home made soups and food to keep us going.  It was so sad to look at the houses that the people had come from and know that no one who was left in those houses or in that community would ever be the same again.  We were there for days and still the support kept coming from the people who had lost so much.

It was a hot day in July and we were on a premises search, my mobile rang and it was an inspector in the communications room, Kent had an incident where a man was suspected of having drowned in water - could we attend to search for and recover the body?  It took a while to get released from the job that we were on but we managed to break away and get to our dive lorry to start the journey to Kent.

On the SSU it is a right of passage to dive for and find your first body, being the newest member of the team it was my turn and I was ready for the challenge, I wanted to get that milestone completed and know that it was something that I was strong enough to do.  As a police officer I had dealt with dead bodies in the past, I had passed my police diving course one month before and felt comfortable in the water, even in nil visibility.  Despite this I did wonder what may happen just in case I couldn’t put the two things together - it was all new territory to me, lots of worries ran through my mind - what if I can’t cope? If I hyperventilate? If I make a fool of myself and can’t live up to the task which I must undertake? 

The journey to Kent was a long one and I tried to put the concerns out of my head.  I rang home to say that I would not be home that evening as by this time it was 2PM.  The incident had happened in a lake on a farm and when we arrived there were lots of press people and photographers present.  Kent Police met us at the scene and told us that the a man was a worker at the farm, he had been drinking alcohol and had dived into the lake but had not made it up to the surface.  His friends had tried to find him but to no avail and they were waiting by the side of the water for us to get his body out.