In-Shore/Near-Shore Emergency Call 911!

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RussR

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A suggestion for many types of emergencies in-shore/near-shore - call 911 FIRST! Many waterside communities have fire/rescue boats, police boats & often even dive teams with extremely fast response times.

Not to disrespect the Coast Guard, but they may not be the fastest response in many shore-side areas. For example, today in Cape May, a marina called the Coast Guard WITHIN SIGHT 1/2 mile way - reporting a person lost off the fuel dock who fell in the water. Of course they started with "the questions" - what is your lat & long!

Meanwhile, someone else called 911, as within 2 minutes, ambulances, fire/rescue & police where all on-scene. Fortunately the guy had already been pulled out, but injured.

The Coast Guard did end up sending a boat, but went right by the marina & looked like another boat cut them off to divert them back to the marina.

Again - the Coast Guard does an important job, but in some cases, local resources may be better/faster!
 
So how did the 911 dispatcher get the position and other information - crystal ball? Lucky guess?
 
quote:
Originally posted by November Charlie

So how did the 911 dispatcher get the position and other information - crystal ball? Lucky guess?

Click to expand...


They work off physical street addresses. The marina will have an address.

George
 
IMO the way the CG starts a be on the lookout call in this area is wrong. They always give lat lon when instead if they converted that to reference to local landmarks plus lat lon people would immediately know if it is in their area. 5 miles WSW of Egmont key lets me know immediately if I am in the area.
Not having multiple bridge crew plotting position and ready to record the string of Lat Lon numbers makes it much more difficult for the average boater to know where the vessel in need of assistance is located.
 
So someone unfamiliar with the marina/fuel dock reports an individual falling in from the fuel dock, and that boater, apparently in the marina, uses his VHF to call a Mayday - am I close? Sounds like a rather specific set of circumstances with a rather specific result. I guess I boat among the unenlightened, cuz I'm yet to see a marina fuel dock with the 911 street address Posted above the pumps.

Seriously, IMHO, the advice above is of limited application - IF a boater knows where they are, and IF they can get to shore, and IF they are reasonably sure that a shore-based rescue would be successful (quantify that!). That's a lot of "IF's".

While open water assistance/rescue is obviously something the CG does better than anyone, how about this - a scenario in the rather close quarters of, say, the Hudson River. Say a boater can see both shorelines -
911 - "9-1-1 . . . What's your emergency?"
boat - "Help me . . . our boat stopped, my husband went to fix it and banged his head, hard. he's delirious and we need help."
911 - "Calm down Ma'am, where are you?"
boat - "I dunno - near a bridge, I see a bridge"
911 - "do you know what bridge?"
boat - "no, we're from Yonkers, and we've were going for some time . . . I don't know where we are - the bridge is on my left, and we're drifting - I see buildings on the shore - does that help?!"
...

I would think in this case, put down the cellphone, and grab the VHF.

dos centavos.
 
I probably used a poor example, but my post was the fustration of listening to distress calls up & down the east coast for 6+ years. In this case, I believe the CG was called at the same time as 911. Standing at the fuel dock they could see all of the CG boats across the harbor - if they hadn't found/pulled the guy out of the water immediately, every resource would have needed to find the victim quickly. The fact that the CG boat zoomed right past the marina was just extra frustrating.

I stick by my suggestion of calling 911 first or a quick second. Due to distances the CG is rarely the first to arrive on scene. Other boaters, Sea Tow, Boat/US, PDs & fire/rescue will probably arrive first. My point is that if you ONLY talk to the CG & ONLY answer their questions, you may delay a response from all of the people who will likely arrive first. Answering the CG questions in order may not "allow" you to say where you are in non-lag/long terms so nearby vessels realize where you are, all while you're repeating your lag/long 4 times & answering "the questions". As far as alerting the local fire/rescue, etc., I don't believe the CG always calls or knows which agency to call - I am only assuming, but I've heard several serious distress calls when you'll hear a FD boat responding 30 - 45+ minutes later - obviously their actual response time would be much less. Police/sheriff boats have been known to turn their VHF radios way down, as to be able to monitor their own frequencies.

By calling 911 first or a quick second, you'll unleash all of the local resources & with the enhenced 911 they will know immediately your exact location. Then when calling the CG, I would also "talk" directly to the many boaters who may be in the immediate area & especially Sea Tow & Boat/US - I have heard many distress calls when they have arrived on-scene in as little as 1 minute! Commonly within 10- 20 minutes. So besides your lag/long, it is imperative to give out your location in simple terms of river, town, channel markers, etc., along with a brief description of your boat, etc.

I'm just suggesting you think of what actions will give you the best/quickest response to your particular situation in your particular location.
 
quote:
Originally posted by gcolton

quote:
Originally posted by November Charlie

So how did the 911 dispatcher get the position and other information - crystal ball? Lucky guess?

Click to expand...


They work off physical street addresses. The marina will have an address.

George

Click to expand...


My point was they need a position, too. Modern PSAP's connected to modern cellphones automatically get a reasonably close lat/long - in strictly decimal format, but nonetheless, they need that position to dispatch resources the right place. Can't send help if you don;t know where to send it.
 
quote:
Originally posted by pdecat

IMO the way the CG starts a be on the lookout call in this area is wrong. They always give lat lon when instead if they converted that to reference to local landmarks plus lat lon people would immediately know if it is in their area. 5 miles WSW of Egmont key lets me know immediately if I am in the area.
Not having multiple bridge crew plotting position and ready to record the string of Lat Lon numbers makes it much more difficult for the average boater to know where the vessel in need of assistance is located.

Click to expand...


That's fair.
I think the cause there is a side effect of modern comms infrastructure like Rescue 21. Now comms can be maintaned by someone covering a wider area with little other responsibilities but radio guard, rather than local, operational people doing it along with their other duties - people that actually know the area they operate in.
 
Slightly off-tangent, unless the person who fell off the fuel dock was unconscious , it's a little hard to picture what all the fuss was about involving all those emergency personnel. Was there no line, PFD , throwable device or dock ladder available in the marina?

But I do agree USCG Hello All Stations/ Urgent Marine Broadcasts would be HUGELY improved by slowing down the speaking of the position coordinates, adding position relative to well known land mass or even buoy, and finally repeating the L/L at the end of the message at a pace one ( read "old ones" too :D ) can actually fully comprehend over ambient boat noise.

I know & understand the idea is to communicate essentials as quickly as possible and clear the frequency, but that is fairly worthless if receiving stations can't even write down full coordinates as they are speed-read to the mic. .
That's pretty frustrating & maddening to hear , especially if someone is really in peril .

I'm also wondering if the USCG might have ability yet to transmit DSC data on ch 70 which could automatically display an active mayday position on any chartplotter connected to a DSC class D VHF?
That would seem easy enough to implement and potentially be very effective in cutting help-response time by a great margin when seconds may count.

That said , I have to admit my older but expensive and therwise very good black box, 2 full handset station, VHF is not set up for DSC comms., so as far as I know the auto chart positioning I described may well be available now .
 
quote:
Originally posted by pdecat

IMO the way the CG starts a be on the lookout call in this area is wrong. They always give lat lon when instead if they converted that to reference to local landmarks plus lat lon people would immediately know if it is in their area. 5 miles WSW of Egmont key lets me know immediately if I am in the area.

Click to expand...


Here in the NYC area, USCG Sector NY does it's MARB and Securite/BOLO calls w/ local landmark references as well as lat/lon. I guess your results may vary!
 
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