Ben Anderson – The Times, Gainesville, Ga.

Dec. 30—More than half of the divers on Hall County’s Marine Rescue Team resigned earlier this month after the fire department announced that it would replace them with a $100,000 underwater drone for search and rescue missions, according to information from the fire department and open records obtained by The Times.

Kimberlie Ledsinger, spokeswoman for Hall County Fire Rescue, confirmed that 15 of 23 divers resigned from the Marine Rescue Team. The team has since added positions and members and now has five openings left, she said.

“Effective immediately I am resigning from the dive team,” Clint Carey, dive supervisor, wrote in a Dec. 2 email to fire department administrators. “I do not agree with the direction it is heading.”

• Hall (GA) Fire Rescue’s dive team will now use a robot to help save drowning victims. Here’s why

The reason for the change, officials said, is that diving in the water to save people is almost always futile. Commissioner Shelly Echols cited fire department data showing that not a single drowning victim had been saved in the past five years. The drone is safer, quicker and cheaper in the long run, officials said. Plus, Echols said, the county still has a dive team in the Sheriff’s Office’s Underwater Search and Rescue Team.

The county has spent more than $141,000 over the last five years on the Marine Rescue Team, according to open records, the vast majority of which was used to buy and maintain diving equipment.

Many divers aren’t happy about being replaced by a robot.

Shortly after the announcement on Dec. 1, divers began emailing their resignations, according to open records.

Alton Lee, Jacob Trites, Cody Long and Jonathan Barton also resigned.

“I cannot get behind the new mission and direction for the Marine Rescue team,” firefighter Jacob Trites wrote in an email. “I have been active on the team for a number of years and I personally know that diving has made a difference in some individuals lives (sic) and gave them a chance to live another day.”

With the underwater drone, he added, “I will not be able to go home at night knowing that I gave that victim every chance they had to see another day.”

Likewise, Carey wrote that the underwater drone performed poorly during a demonstration. It took the drone more than 30 minutes to do what he could have done in 5 minutes, he wrote, and that was with “the best operator in the country running it.”

That operator was Waylon Price, the sales manager for Oceanbotics, who spoke to The Times about the demonstration.

“I’d stepped away to use the restroom and make a phone call, and when I returned they had hidden a mannequin in the water, and they wanted to see what it would look like from start to finish — from opening the box, putting it together, deploying it, putting it out and finding the mannequin,” Price said.

He said it took about 20 minutes from start to finish.

He wouldn’t say whether the drone is meant to serve as a viable replacement for a human dive team. “What I can say is I consider it a valuable tool for any dive team, with or without divers,” he said.

The drone is expected to arrive in January, and Marine Rescue staff will receive training so they can operate it in time for Memorial Day. Price said the drone requires minimal training. An Xbox-like controller is used to operate it.

The fire department will also be purchasing a $650,000 fire boat that will act like an ambulance on the water with a powerful firehose.

The China Spring Volunteer Fire Department bought a new tanker truck with money from a grant and local fundraising efforts, WacoTrib.com reported.

A $220,000 grant from the Texas A&M Forest Service, together with money the department raised on its own, enabled the $300,000 purchase, officials said.

In addition to the ability to supply water to other apparatus, the 4,000-gallon tanker also has a front-mounted nozzle, a fire official said.

The China Spring department is a member of the fire tanker task force in McLennan County and responds to calls from western McLennan County to eastern Bosque County, the report said.

The grant came through the Texas A&M Forest Service’s state-funded Rural Volunteer Fire Department Assistance Program, according to a forest service statement.

The Halifax Volunteer Fire Department has a new truck that will very soon be put into service, WSET.com reported.

On Thursday the HVFD posted photos of the new vehicle, saying some of their members had traveled to Pennsylvania to pick up the truck and drive it home after a final inspection.

The tanker was made by 4Guys in Meyersville (PA). Although the drive from the state back to Halifax is a long one, HVFD went live on Facebook to show the community the moments it arrived to the station, the report said.

On December 18, the Princess Anne (MD) Volunteer Fire Company suffered a catastrophic failure on one of the overhead doors on the engine bay side, the department said in a Facebook post recently.

The door blew out, or collapsed, during a heavy storm. While the fire company labeled this as a catastrophic failure, it also said the door was 21 years old and failures were bound to happen. 

Now, a hanging tarp serves as a coverup for where the door was, WBOC.com reported. A fire official said the broken door won’t delay their response time. 

The fire official said it is somewhat a struggle getting the fire engines in and out of the bays, the report said. 

The rescue and tower truck now sit in the back of the bay and the smaller truck and brush truck have taken their place. It means if a call comes in, those trucks have to carefully maneuver out the side door, the report said. 

Port Huron (MI) Fire Department is undertaking two major fire station projects, thetimesherald.com reported. Firefighters started moving back into the city’s north-end station Thursday after a months-long, $1.5 million upgrade to Station 3 at 1914 Sanborn Street.

Major renovations are about 95% done, a fire official said. American Rescue Plan Act funds paid for the work, which began in August, the report said. Personnel used a trailer as living quarters nearby while work took place.

$10 million White Park Station Project Underway

Partners in Architecture have drawn up the layout and plans for the new White Park station, the report said. The latest project bids for the work this year went to the Dailey Company.

That station will replace the city’s aging main station off River Street that was built in 1960 and which, according to officials, often citing a sinking foundation near the Black River, would not be cost-effective to repair, according to the report.

The city has put the new station cost estimates at more than $10 million.

The 18,915-square-foot fire station building will have a host of locker and dorm rooms, offices, and training areas, the report said. The building will also contain eight combined locker and dorm rooms with four bathrooms for on-duty firefighters, as well as decontamination areas, equipment lockers, storage, a lobby, multiple offices and a large training room.

Construction, which will begin early 2023, is expected to be carried out over the next two years, according to the report.