Water/Rescue day

10-August-2017
   On Wednesday 9-August the Bogota Emergency Services Youth Academy visited the Bogota Swim Club pool to hold its  annual Water & Rescue day.  There were four stations set-up for the Cadets to learn rescue techniques. The first station was use to teach the Cadets how Rescue Workers go about extricating a victim trapped in a vehicle involved in an accident.  Members of Bogota Rescue Squad 46 had the Cadet dress in full turnout gear for their task. The Cadets were shown how to remove the windows of a vehicle and how to use the "Jaws of Life" tool. The Hydraulic rescue tools are used to remove parts of a vehicle in order to allow have better access to the person trapped inside. Each Cadet was instructed on the tools use, and then removed a part of the vehicle  themselves.  Another station  run by Rescue 46 was to teach the Cadets how to safely remove a victim from an enclosed space. The Cadets  took turns as the crawl team, which would go into the situation to remove the victim, also a Cadet.   While the other Squad members, became the Pull Team, which assisted in pulling the victim to safety. The space was made up of traffic bearers and plywood. To add realism Instructors would randomly bang on the plywood of spray water on the crawl team to challenge their focus. 
   A third Station was the Scuba instruction. This activity unique the Bogota Emergency Services Youth Academy that taught the basic of SCUBA diving to the Cadets. This was used to help teach the Cadets how to move in and unfamiliar environment with confidence.  The Cadet were dressed in full SCUBA gear given lessons on how to breath and move under water. Then they circled the South end of the pool, submerged the entire time.  
   The fourth station was to teach how a person on land can rescue a victim in the water. Half of the squad were  to jump off the high board so they could be saved by the others throwing them a life preserver. Towards the end of the morning this became an exercise in a demonstration of the some of the main goals of the Academy program. One Cadet hesitated, then refused to climb up the high board. When this started to become a problem Counselor
Whitney Luciano started talking to the Cadet.  She was joined by Squad Instructor Gabe Castellanos. Instructor Castellanos showed the Cadet that  the Academy will only make the Cadets do things that they would do themselves. Finally Ms Luciano and Instructor  Castellanos encouraged the Cadet to try the low board.  When that was successful they asked the Cadet to take the next step and conquer the high board. The Cadet made it to the top then paused again. Both  Ms Luciano and Instructor  Castellanos  each took turns climbing up with the Cadet to encourage him that he could meet his goal of finishing the dive.  Finally the Cadet jumped into the water to the cheers , and congratulations of the fellow Cadets. This was an example of a number of principals of the Academy. Trust, teamwork, and pushing oneself beyond what they thought they could do and accomplishing a goals.
   After Lunch the Cadet toured a number of different type of rescue vehicles. This included equipment from Hackensack, Englewood, and Holy Name Hospitals.

Links to the Bergen Record's Story about Duty Day 4 : http://www.northjersey.com Bogota  and http://www.northjersey.com BPESYA
Link to NJTV news story about Duty Day 4: http://www.njtvonline.org Bogota Youth Academy

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