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The sedan entered the lake with a splash and floated precariously for a while, the buoyant tires and heavy engine battling until at last water rushed in through the windows. From there it was a matter of seconds before the car filled and pitched forward, slipping nose first into the black water.
Luckily for the training scenario it landed in the right position with its tires down in the muck. The Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office (PCSO) Dive Team was undergoing a week of intense training. “Today we’re taking this car and putting it into roughly 20 feet of water,” said Dive Team leader Deputy Stephan Hole. “Then we’re going to have our divers attach straps to the vehicle itself, then attach lift bags to the car and raise it up toward the surface.” Two divers are in the water at a time, with at least one person on shore. After that team successfully raises the vehicle, they’ll drop it down again and other members of the team will repeat the exercise. “The purpose is to simulate having to recover a car that gets into a body of water, whether by accident like a crash off a bridge, or if it was dumped because it was stolen. It might be too far from shore for a cable from a tow truck to span out and get it, so we may have to lift it and drag it in closer.”
Deputy Hole said that most of their submerged vehicle callouts are a lot less dramatic. The most common call is for a vehicle that miscalculated at a boat launch and rolled into the water. In most of these cases no one is inside the vehicle and the owner is just embarrassed, not in any danger. The Dive Team member can attach a tow cable to the vehicle and a tow truck can pull it out. But sometimes a vehicle recovery is a lot more challenging.
In the training exercise, having the car in a natural position – tires down, roof up – is both more realistic and more challenging. Most cars will land that way, but it would be easier to find attachment points if the tires were up. Different cases present different complications, and they may have to get creative in their approach. Depending on where the vehicle lands or how long it has been submerged, the best attachment points can be under a couple feet of mud. If it is a vehicle from a crime and the windows are up they need to preserve whatever evidence may be inside – even a body – so they can’t break the windows to make a place for the straps. In that case they would have to hook the wheels or go around the suspension, a longer and trickier process.
Training days are a chance to experiment, and the first divers tried the less frequently used method of putting the bag directly inside the car instead of attaching it externally. When the bag shifted to the back of the vehicle and wouldn’t raise it evenly, they changed tactics and used straps to attach two lift bags outside of the car. The bags are then filled via a hose that is connected to a scuba tank full of compressed air on the shore. In the first training scenario the bags float to the surface like huge jellyfish, the car suspended below. From there it is relatively easy to float the car closer to shore where Clearwater Towing Service’s heavy-duty tow truck can carefully pull it from the water.
Bob Clark, Operations Manager at Clearwater Towing Service, said they have been working with the PCSO Dive Team for years, helping them out with all of their training free of charge. They also take any of the water recovery calls in the north half of the county. Bob said they’ve helped out with all kinds of training scenarios. Once they wanted to practice recovering sunken boats, but there was just one problem. Cars aren’t designed to float, but boats are. “It wouldn’t sink. We drilled holes, nothing worked.” Before they use any vehicle for training they take out the battery and drain out all the fluids so there’s no danger of contaminating the waterway.
More and more, submerged vehicles are turning up in cold cases thanks to independent groups like Sunshine State Sonar, which researches old missing persons cases and scours Florida’s waterways with equipment that can image the depths. When they find a vehicle, they alert law enforcement so they can begin their investigation and recovery. In 2023, the PCSO Dive Team recovered the vehicle and remains of Robert Helphrey, who had gone missing in 2006. They’ve pulled two unoccupied cars out of Blossom Lake Park, a 1979 Chevy Nova from a north county canal. That one disintegrated as soon as they tried to move it and had to be taken out in pieces.
“We train once a month, plus a full week of training once a year, and it always varies,” Deputy Hole said. A common call is to search a waterway for a firearm someone tossed after a crime, so they might practice hand searches, where they comb through the mud in a canal or search the sea floor under a bridge for the discarded weapon. They are also called upon to recover bodies of drowning victims, so they train with their underwater sonar, which can be used to locate submerged objects or bodies.
Safety is always a consideration, but they cut a lot of the risk by having standardized equipment and gear set-up throughout the team. If they need to switch gear or help a teammate they all know how things work and how they are positioned. When the team members dive recreationally they are encouraged to use the same gear and set-up to build muscle memory. Gators aren’t a problem – they’re scared by all the commotion a diver makes. They start with a little over 3,000 psi of air and make sure they surface by the time they’re down to 500 psi.
The biggest annoyance is searching bodies of water where people have thrown trash. In one apartment complex they found TV remotes everywhere they searched. In golf course ponds, in addition to golf balls, they find individual clubs and even a whole bag full of clubs, no doubt thrown in by someone whose game that day was so bad they decided to quit the sport forever. Littering isn’t just against the law, it’s a serious impediment to an underwater search. Whether they’re searching by hand or with a metal detector, it can take them a long time just to clear the edge of a lake because they’re constantly finding things people throw in the water. They’re looking for a gun, but the detector is hitting on a hundred beer cans.
There are two teams, which alternate being on call for two weeks at a time. They respond day or night to any dive recovery call. They average about 16 to 20 calls a year, but so far this year they’re only at 10. The busiest time of year for them is in the summer, so fingers crossed that the rest of the year stays uneventful for them. Whatever happens, the PCSO Dive Team is ready to don their gear and splash into action.
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