Sheriff’s office nets $19,300 grant for dive, rescue team

BONNERS FERRY — Boundary County Sheriff’s Office has received at $19,300 grant from the BNSF Railway Foundation for the community’s dive rescue team and water emergency response. The grant award of $19,300 will be used to update and outfit divers with appropriate safety gear for dive rescue, including underwater communications.

Boundary County Sheriff Dave Kramer wrote the grant request to foundation for the specific purpose of getting proper diving safety equipment for the divers. Kramer and Bonners Ferry Police Chief Brian Zimmerman helped create a dive rescue team in Boundary County in the early 1980s.

Both Kramer and Zimmerman talked about the eye-opening experience when they made their first dive in the Kootenai River where there was a strong current. They recognized a need in Boundary County with the river and all of the lakes, to have trained divers ready to respond to water emergencies. Boundary Dive Rescue eventually joined with Boundary Search and Rescue to what it is today, Boundary Search and Dive Rescue. Kramer has continued to be a diver on the team since it first started in the early 1980s.

“I am extremely excited to see the next generation of dive rescue professionals and the level that the team has been building up to,” said Kramer.

Divers with the Boundary County Sheriff’s Office and Search and Rescue have been working hard to build up the skills and equipment necessary for the challenging types of conditions. The dive team is often faced with very limited visibility, currents, night dives, ice dives, searches and working around underwater obstacles and underwater crime scene investigations. Currently the divers have different levels of experience and the goal is to bring all of the divers up to standards needed to safely be a public safety diver and the appropriate equipment.

Sheriff’s Detective Caleb Watts, who is also a diver and Search and Rescue Diver, Levi Falck, have been building the dive team and water response capabilities. They have been arranging training and working with the divers to make sure that the community has a fully trained team, which currently includes five divers on the sheriff’s office and about the same with search and rescue all working together.

“Although the last couple of months have been extremely hard on everyone with the Stay at Home order, we are still working and training as hard as we can to bring the very best service to our community,” Watts said.

Sheriff Kramer wrote the grant request to BNSF railway foundation for the specific purpose of getting proper diving safety equipment for the divers.

Jake Pawlison with Jake’s Scuba Adventure’s in Coeur d Alene, has been working with the team and providing training to the group and certifications. Pawlison said, “proper diving equipment is life, right equipment and training, and it is a world of difference between recreational diving and public safety diving, the difference is night and day.”

Reserve Deputy Scott Browne is also a certified dive instructor and not only works with the divers, but also volunteers to assist Detective Caleb Watts on Marine patrols on the river throughout the year.

Kramer and all of the rescue divers are very grateful to the dedication and commitment that Pawlison and Browne provide to the divers to help improve their skills with the end goal of keeping them safe and being able to do the job that needs to be done.

With the generous donations from BNSF Railway Foundation and an earlier donation from 9B Foundation and the Mclowski estate, the divers have been able to obtain proper equipment which includes drysuits, tanks, dive computers and regulators, full face masks with diver to diver and diver to surface communications along with specialized training courses.

The divers with the Sheriff’s Office and Search and Rescue will be joining the Kootenai County and Spokane County Dive Teams for training in July 2020. They will be completing the public safety diver course.