The Editor says: I still remember a certain plane crash where many firefighters were deployed to support search-and-rescue operations in the Keelung River. The cold water was laced with fuel and oil — and the answer we got was that there weren't enough drysuits to go around, let alone anyone who had received proper drysuit training. I sincerely hope that senior fire service commanders in Taiwan will stop paying lip service to reform and instead appoint people with real hands-on experience to conduct a comprehensive review of Taiwan's public safety diving training. This article is reprinted in full from Coach Ken (黃春源) 's Facebook.
We Have Lost a Young Firefighter Brother
Mid-Autumn Festival is one of the most cherished holidays in Chinese culture — a time for families to reunite. Sadly, just a few days ago, we lost yet another young firefighter. He lost his precious life in an accident during a diving training exercise. He and his family have been separated forever, never to be reunited in this world.
Related link: Accident During Water Training! Firefighter Who Drowned Passes Away Despite Emergency Treatment
Several days have passed since the incident. Compared to line-of-duty deaths in fires, the public outcry over this accident has been relatively muted. Yet accidents during firefighter training and accidents involving recreational divers carry entirely different dimensions — dimensions well worth examining.
Irregular Diving Training
This is how the structure of firefighter diving works in Taiwan. Fire departments in various cities and counties hold diving training on an irregular basis. Firefighters may also independently obtain recognized recreational diving certifications — what the community calls a "dive card" — through civilian dive operators. Most municipal and county fire departments, regardless of the certifying agency, will accept and recognize this dive card as proof that the individual has diving capability. More proactive units will organize rescue diver training for their own personnel, sometimes in conjunction with volunteer firefighters or dive instructors with relevant expertise, and sometimes by carving out a small budget to hire outside operators to run the training.
The budget that city and county governments allocate for this kind of training is almost always pitifully small. I don't know whether it's a cultural hangover from being accustomed to receiving free ambulances, free oxygen, and equipment donated by the public — but I genuinely believe the training budget is embarrassingly inadequate. The process for selecting personnel to attend diving training is its own ecosystem. And the standards and methods of that diving training are yet another ecosystem entirely.
These certified divers may enter the water fewer than 15 times in a year (and even that may be an overestimate). Moreover, the majority of that training takes place in the ocean — which is quite different from the ponds and reservoirs they actually encounter on the job.
I want to circle back to the core issue: For many years, the diving culture within the fire service has essentially taken recreational diving curricula and tried to apply them to public safety water rescue operations. I cannot go into full detail here about the differences between recreational diving and public safety diving — I can only say that proceeding this way carries enormous risk. Yet the units responsible for overseeing training typically don't understand diving, and therefore cannot foresee the extent of that risk.
The truth is, efforts have been made in the past. Several years ago, under the support of then-director Hsiao, the National Fire Agency's training center cultivated a cohort of public safety diving instructors. The following year, public safety diving team training was rolled out for the six special municipalities. Personnel were later even sent to the United States for further study.
What came of that first instructor training program? I'd wager that very few of those instructors are still actively teaching in their own counties and cities today. The reason: individual counties and cities never seriously committed to mainstreaming public safety diving within their fire services. With no students to teach, those instructors gradually faded away.
This is a systemic problem. Leadership changes bring changes in priorities. There are always reasons and excuses for why things that should be sustained can't be.
And what became of the six-city PSD team training program? To my knowledge, not a single dedicated PSD diving unit has ever been formally established. The problem loops back to how personnel are selected for diving training. Getting the opportunity to train and earn a certification is seen as a perk — that's the prevailing culture. The people who lobby to attend training, the people who select trainees, and the people who genuinely should be trained have never managed to align in any truly fair way. This is a chronic dysfunction with no easy solution.
On the surface, all six municipalities managed to send personnel through that training program. But after graduation, those personnel returned to their respective precincts, districts, and divisions scattered across each city. Equipment could not be consolidated. It became nearly impossible for them to ever come together again as a coherent, disciplined team capable of executing diving operations — whether measured by equipment readiness or the erosion of technical skills over time.
But please — do not wait until someone dies before saying: "We will definitely upgrade our equipment." That kind of official talk means nothing. Waiting for corporate donations or purchasing shiny new gear may be enough to quiet the public debate, but it does nothing to address the ongoing training risks facing frontline personnel.
Do you understand what I'm getting at?
- First: Treating recreational diving as the foundation for fire service public safety diving is fundamentally and completely wrong.
- Second: City and county agencies should evaluate whether they need to establish dedicated mountain and water emergency response fire units (a framework that has since developed into the functional volunteer firefighter system) — and I welcome that development.
- Third: Building a proper public safety rescue diving system within the fire service structure cannot wait any longer.
Professional Is Professional, Amateur Is Amateur — These Are Two Clearly Separate Paths
Let me share a glimpse of how things are done in Japan and see whether the grass is greener. Within the Japanese fire service, water rescue units are dedicated, purpose-built teams. To become a water emergency responder, all water-related training is officially administered by the government. For diving specifically, training runs for 12 weeks and starts from zero — it is not based on any recreational diving curriculum. After completing the practical training, candidates must sit for the national diving officer examination held that year. Only upon passing both the practical and written components does one officially qualify as a certified diving officer (潛水士).
Many of my Japanese students are firefighters with over 500 dives under their belt. Not one of them holds a single recreational diving certification — which is precisely why they come to me for recreational diving courses: to properly qualify as recreational divers. They have to start from the beginning just to enjoy the beauty of the underwater world.
Here's another example I've brought up before: firefighters who use emergency radio equipment must obtain the Special Land Radio Operator qualification before they are legally authorized to operate radio-frequency equipment on scene. (Ask yourself honestly: how much do you know about emergency radio?)
It comes back to the same point: professional is professional, amateur is amateur — these are two clearly separate paths.
The training accident in Chiayi County has already happened — and it is a tragedy. I gave myself a few days to process before writing this. My purpose is not to attack anyone. Since the incident occurred, I have gathered a great deal of firsthand information. From what I understand, given the level of diving knowledge and capability that county possesses, the risk management they arranged for this training exercise was already the best they could do.
I hope this unit recognizes that your training methods still carry significant risk. I sincerely hope you will take this opportunity to carefully redesign your training approach going forward and reduce the risk of injury or death to your personnel.
At the same time, I want this to be seen by those who once worked hard to advance public safety diving in the fire service: Given your current position and standing, a simple "Condolences. R.I.P." is not enough.
Review the diving training structure of fire departments across every city and county in Taiwan right now. Improve the training content to reduce the risk of casualties during firefighter diving training. Stop treating human lives as consumables. That is what I, as an ordinary citizen, am asking for.
This Mid-Autumn Festival, a young firefighter can no longer gather with his family. He is gone forever — because we failed to build the right kind of training. How can we live with that? How can we live with that?
In case anyone wants to dismiss me: I'll briefly establish my credentials. I am the first person in Taiwan — other than my own training officer — to qualify as a public safety diving instructor under one particular system. I am also the sixth person in Japan to earn a public safety diving instructor certification under a second system. My professional work in Japan involves implementing disaster response programs for developing countries on behalf of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
My gratitude to Coach 旗元 for bringing us together — to the dedicated students, I hope you never feel alone. I earnestly ask those outside the fire service community to share this widely. I've always believed this conversation cannot stay within the echo chamber. Throwing stones at a tank — it may be hard if it's just me alone, but if you join in too, maybe we can make a difference.
The author of this article: Coach 黃春源
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