The Regina Police Service Underwater Investigation and Recovery Team (UIRT), with the help of the Wascana Centre Authority and the City of Regina, will be conducting dive training this week as part of the team’s regularly scheduled skills and safety training. The dives will take place at Wascana Lake on Thursday, September 9, 2010 and at Last Mountain Lake on Friday, September 10, 2010. This realistic training is essential to developing and maintaining safe working practices for the UIRT and will improve the teams’ service capabilities for the citizens of Regina.
On Thursday, September 9th, the team will be training for article search and recovery at Wascana Lake. Some of the learning opportunities presented in a dive of this sort come with issues of visibility and entanglement. Dealing with these conditions in a relatively controlled environment increases skill level and readiness for real underwater investigations. On Friday, September 10th, at Last Mountain Lake, the team will have an opportunity to test skills in a different location. The divers will be given a scenario and will have to carry out all the tasks associated to information gathering, search and recovery, while dealing with the conditions presented by a different day (weather) and location (shoreline, water quality and lake bed composition). Three new team members will join established UIRT members in meeting required certification levels.
