Water rescue drills were conducted by the members of the Mastic Beach Fire Department on Wednesday, including practice with a new sonar device that allows them to see underwater.
“It’s very effective at locating bodies,” explained district Commissioner Bill Biondi as the AQUAEYE camera located a submerged scuba diver, volunteer firefighter Rick Dippa, about 75 feet away. He was marked as an X on the screen, giving rescuers his exact location. The sonar eye can also pick up boats, cars, Jet Skis, and other objects underwater.
The $8,000 unit has a range of about 165 feet and can look down 60 feet while operating off a dock, Jet Ski, or the department’s 25-foot marine safe boat. Fire Captain Kevin Wittman attached a long handle to the $8,000 unit, giving it even more depth as rescue team members familiarized themselves with the device. It would have greatly assisted the team, Wittman said, when they spent hours searching for a dock worker who had fallen off his boat at the Shirley Marina in the winter of 2022. The Eye can see through ice and operate at -40 degrees F, he noted.
The AQUAEYE will be available to other South Shore departments as part of Mastic Beach’s participation in the Marine Incident Response Team, a group organized after the Coast Guard closed its East Moriches Station and put the burden of water rescues on the locals. “We’ve added a few more departments to the team and now cover the waters from Patchogue to Westhampton Beach,” Biondi said.
The Mastic Beach volunteers are up to the task, having a well-trained scuba team with a special four-wheel-drive truck to access Fire Island and other beach areas, a Jet Ski squad, and ocean-trained water rescue specialists. The department already had two drownings this summer in its jurisdiction, but it didn’t need the AQUAEYE as the victims were quickly recovered.
While the two dozen volunteers were training at the Mastic Beach Property Owners Lagoon, a drone appeared overhead and kept coming in closer and closer. It wasn’t part of the exercise. The drone had a long tail attached, and the firefighters saw that it had a note on it. When it got close enough, former Commissioner Charlie O’Connor could read it. “Thank you for your service,” he called out to the appreciative crowd.