Going deep: Dive teams across Massachusetts face a busy season of water rescues – The Boston Globe

“It’s not glamorous,” said Stoneham Fire Chief Matthew Grafton. “It’s hard work.”

On a recent muggy Thursday afternoon, the Stoneham dive team gathered for a drill at nearby Spot Pond. They arrived in two trucks, two cruisers, and a fire engine. “No Swimming” signs marked the trees by the still water, with brightly colored kayaks visible in the distance. The team unloaded packs upon packs of gear, carrying suits, weights, rope, air tanks, and metal fold-out benches to assist with prep.

The Stoneham team does quarterly trainings to practice the entire diving process, from suiting up with gear to conducting searches in the water.

Though the divers are the ones in the water, it’s the firefighters on land who direct the divers and control the line of rope to determine how deep or far out they go. As diver Jack Sullivan practiced a side-to-side search pattern, firefighter William King controlled the rope, and firefighter Mike Coughlin communicated with Jack using a headset.

The dive teams have advanced equipment that can weigh between 40 and 70 pounds, which is important to let the divers sink deep in the water. When searching for swimmers, divers can go as deep as 10 to 15 feet. When searching for divers, who may have drowned due to a medical emergency, they can go as low as 70 feet, according to Beverly Fire Captain Arthur Fitzpatrick.

During a rescue, every minute counts. In the 78-degree water they worked in during their drill, a rescue would likely need to happen within the hour, but survival chances vary due to factors including age, health, water temperature, and length of submersion. After five minutes of submersion, chances of a rescue dim, said Dr. Michael Flaherty, a pediatric critical care physician and director of the Trauma & Injury Prevention Outreach Program at Mass General for Children.

With those long odds, most dive-team missions end with the recovery of a body. Of the 22 incidents the Massachusetts State Police Dive Team has responded to this year, 12 bodies were recovered, three washed up weeks to months later, four have not been located, and three were found alive the next day or week, according to a State Police spokesperson.

Once in recovery mode, the team works to return the body to help provide closure for the family.

Stoneham’s dive team has been around since the 1980s, but they’ve been more active in recent years as they’re now better equipped to respond to emergencies. Of the 42 personnel at the department, 10 are firefighters who are also certified divers. The bags of diving equipment at the station are packed and ready to go in case of an emergency.

Dive teams are largely volunteer-based, meaning that they are firefighters who have opted to undergo the training and certification to become divers for the team. Though they receive many calls throughout the year, only several of those calls end up with divers in the water searching for a swimmer, said Grafton.

Diving in the waters of Massachusetts isn’t as glamorous as recreational diving somewhere closer to the Earth’s equator. The bodies of water here, especially lakes and ponds, can be full of illegally dumped junk like grocery carts, bicycles, and even cars. And the water is murky: “You can’t even see your hand in front of you,” Grafton said.

The mental toll of rescue diving is eased by the tight-knit bond of the team and the strong communication between its members, but it can feel dangerous nonetheless.

“It’s not something you do all the time, so you have to mentally prepare for it,” said Fitzpatrick. “You can try to escape a burning house, but underwater, there can be 60 feet of water above you.”

While another Stoneham diver was continuing his training in the water at Spot Pond in Stoneham, the firefighters’ personal radios alerted them to an incident in Wakefield where a family had fallen into the water.

Immediately, the team sprang into action, not bothering to take off their diving suits in case they needed to quickly get into the water at the next site. They packed their gear, zipped up supplies, and threw them into the trunks. In just a couple of minutes, the diving station that had taken at least ten minutes to set up was packed away.

Then the radio chirped again, updating them that the family had been wearing life jackets and were safe. Shoulders relaxed with relief and chuckles went around.

“It wouldn’t be the first time,” said Sullivan, one of the divers who had been training in the water.

“Doesn’t surprise me,” agreed firefighter Michael Labriola, who serves as the dive team’s coordinator.

And indeed, later that same day, the team was called to respond to an unconfirmed report of a missing swimmer at Wright’s Pond in Medford, but after numerous passes through the water by Stoneham and State Police dive teams, it turned out to be a false alarm.

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Sarah Raza can be reached at sarah.raza@globe.com. Follow her @sarahmraza.