BAMSAR MINUTES

Minutes of the November 2004, BAMSAR meeting, held at Mastic. Thanks to Mastic’s Chiefs and Mike Buckheit for their hospitality.

Present: Hagerman, Bellport, Mastic Beach, Mastic, Center Moriches, Group

Moriches and Eastport. Randy Randazzo, Hampton Dive Center, was our guest.

Excused: None.

Old Business: Tim Dahlen is looking into prices for equipment that we could

purchase in order to practice the new current diving techniques, learned over

Columbus Day weekend. He will have more info at January’s meeting.

Secretary read a letter of thanks from Sheriff Tisch.

New Business:

It was learned that mention had been made in the Brookhaven Town Chief’s

Council that the individual teams/units that make up BAMSAR, can go and get

grants to fund their team’s equipment purchases. More to follow on this.

Randy Randazzo gave a presentation on what new programs and services

Hampton Dive Center will have available to our dive teams in the coming year.

Some of these include:

* “One Price” instructional program that includes open water, advanced, dry suit, and buddy rescue dive courses, rolled in together;

* Equipment service tracking, to better track what equipment is due for

service, when it was serviced, and what was done;

* Certain free services, such as bottle fills, pool availability;

* Trade-in program, for equipment upgrades;

* Extended hours, upon request;

* 24 hour contact numbers;

Fire Department appreciation days that can include “Discover Scuba” classes,

dives at Atlantis Marine World Aquarium and local boat dives (which will count

toward advanced certifications);

An AGA mask repair/maintenance seminar, on Tuesday, 22 March, 9 a.m. to 5

p.m. Cost is $175; Capability of servicing AGA masks at HDC, as well as

stocking AGA parts, which will result in a faster turn-around time.

We’d like to hold a Dive Rescue 1 course again, in May. The weekend would be

the 20^th, 21^st, and 22^nd. Please bring this back to your departments to see what

kind of interest there is in it, and bring back your results, next month.

Preplanning tabletop sessions were discussed, with an eye toward coming up with

a workable preplan for the areas we serve. Bill Biondi volunteered to organize the

first session. We also asked Commander Healey if we could get in on the tabletop

sessions conducted by the Coast Guard. He agreed to work with us on that.

Commander Healey also will be formulating a set of rules for all water rescue

teams in Nassau and Suffolk, that will need to be adhered to, in order to be

recognized as a “rescue agency” by the Coast Guard. Chief among these rules are that:

A) All responders must be in personal flotation devices. No turnout gear will be allowed for on-water, or near-water rescue operations.

B) All responding vessels must comply with Federal safety and operating requirements (includes navigation lights at night).

C) All responding agencies must adhere to the Incident Command System, and recognize only one incident commander at an incident. No agency will be allowed to set up a separate command system in competition with the one already established for the incident.

D) Responding agencies must be certified as rescue agencies, to a recognized standard. (For example, BAMSAR is certified to the OSHA recognized standard, NFPA 1670, by Diver Rescue International, or by Lifeguard Systems, in Bayport FD).

Training:

Brookhaven Lab: Equipment checkout. TBA.

Next meeting: Thursday, 13 January 2005, at 1930, at Mastic Beach FD.

Calendar 2005

January 13^th Mastic Beach

February 10^th Brookhaven

March 10^th Coast Guard Group Moriches

April 14^th Center Moriches

May 12^th Hampton Dive Center, Riverhead

June 09^th Bellport

July 14^th South Country

August 11^th Patchogue

September 08^th Eastport

October 13^th Bayport

November 10^th Mastic

No December Meeting

Any corrections, additions, or questions; please contact the Secretary.

Respectfully,

John Foley