By Martin B. Cassidy
Staff Writer
Article Launched: 07/24/2008 02:30:54 AM EDT
Splashing slowly through Greenwich Harbor, Sound Beach volunteer firefighters yesterday took turns checking out a luminous red, blue and yellow image of the seabed of the channel on-screen.
Rocks, fish and other details could be made out clearly.
"You can really see what is going on," Assistant Sound Beach Chief John Cunningham said.
Half a dozen certified rescue divers from the Sound Beach Volunteer Fire Department tested out a new gadget called the Centurion Sea Scan PC, a portable "side-scan" sonar machine which uses high frequency soundwaves to create images over a large area almost instantaneously.
Cunningham, a member of the dive team, said the department hopes to buy the $45,000 machine soon to dramatically improve the department's odds of locating and rescuing missing boaters and swimmers who are drowning.
Currently the department has 11 divers certified to conduct rescue operations, Cunningham said.
"Right now if we do a rescue operation we search manually," said Cunningham. "When you have a large body of water and looking for someone in a life or death situation it can help you work more quickly."The machine, manufactured by Virginia-based Marine Sonic Technology Inc., emits a fan-shaped sound wave towards the bottom through a tubular transmitter dragged behind the boat.
By sending a pulse over a wider area on both sides of the boat, the device can capture a 133-foot-wide swath of sea floor at anyone time, speeding up a rescue search, said Capt. Daniel Byrne, head of the Sound Beach rescue dive team.
Searching an area using their hands is a painstaking and often anxiety-ridden process, Byrne said.
"It also helps spot objects that can be dangerous to divers like bicycles, wires, or other obstacles," Byrne said. "This would help us rule out areas where we shouldn't be searching."
Most of the Sound Beach Volunteer Fire Department's firefighters are certified in some type of life-saving discipline, including dive, confined space, trench, rope, or building collapse rescue, the firefighters said.
Fred Brooks, a volunteer firefighter and diver at Sound Beach, said that the department is in the middle of a fund-raising drive in hopes of acquiring the Sea Scan machine and other equipment.
"In an emergency situation the machine would help immensely,"said Brooks, a 10-year veteran of the rescue dive team. "If it saved one life it would be worth the cost."
- Staff Writer Martin B. Cassidy can be reached at martin.cassidy@scni.com or at (203) 625-4439.