ERD personnel are members of police, fire, and other community safety organizations who routinely perform in-water search, rescue, and recovery operations for the benefit of the general public. During the year, a number of these ERD teams travel to Haigh Quarry in Kankakee, Illinois, to practice the skills required and needed for professional underwater technical rescue. Once on-site, they run through various simulated emergency response situations in preparation for a future crisis.

ERD departments often work in adverse weather and water conditions that most recreational scuba divers never experience, including HazMat and entanglement situations. That is why ERD surface-to-diver communications, and the use of
line-tenders, play such an important role in the personal safety of each and every response diver. All departments providing ERD services must follow strict *OSHA and *NFPA guidelines for public rescue procedures and are required to be certified by an agency that offers a public safety diving program.

ERD teams encounter:

• Downed aircraft
• Submerged vehicles
• Lost person searches
• Trapped victims
• Body recovery
• UW crime scene investigations
• Evidence searches and/or recoveries
• Hazardous chemical conditions
• Overhead environments

Quarry Lab
To aid in ERD training operations at Haigh Quarry a new NAG project is currently under development for increasing all ERD skill levels. This underwater site will be known as ‘Quarry Lab’ and will contain a variety of situations and scenarios that a response team might encounter during an actual accident or disaster. Quarry Lab will be located in 50’ of water adjacent to the quarry's south floating dock.