Members of the Water Entry Team with the Reno Fire Department recently got new tools that assist with underwater body recovery called AquaEye.
Thanks to the Gary Sinise Foundation, a first responder outreach nonprofit, Reno Fire received funding to get this new equipment that can help shorten water rescue times.
"The old fashion way just took so long," said Jonathan Bernard, Water Entry Team director for RFD. "It was very labor intensive, we had to break all the ice, we had to do a probe search, and then dive down to the victim to rescue them."
You may remember us reporting in 2015 when a 13-year-old boy died after falling through the ice in a lake in south Reno. Bernard says it took them about 45 minutes to find his body.
"It was really hard on the team. It was hard on the ER staff that were working it. I can't imagine what it was like for the parents. So, we went on the hunt for something better," he says.
Using AI technology, Bernard says the AquaEye can show them what it found using a mark on a map with a distance, helping teams better pinpoint where the victim is to make the search faster.
"The device is handheld, it's really simple to work. We just put it underneath the water and under whatever ice shelf is there, pull the trigger, and we can do a 180 degree sweep at a time. It will search out to 50-meter distance away from the device."
He tells us the sonar device will help give them a good starting point, getting them three or four feet of where to start their probe line. That way they can quickly find the victim, dive down, retrieve them, and cut the search time by more than half.
