Water rescue team sharpens its ice-diving skills

Cold comfort

The teams have largely remained out of the spotlight, and few people are aware of the dangers involved in the rescuers' work.

In northern China, the toughest rescues occur in winter. A person waiting to be rescued in the South China Sea can survive for around 30 hours, but during the depths of a northern winter they may lose consciousness in just 20 minutes.

"Our mission is to rescue people trapped in the water, but in most cases their vital signs are absent when we find them," said Zheng Haiyang, a 26-year-old firefighter from Dezhou, Shandong province, who has trained as a water rescuer with the Miyun team for about eight years.

Every winter, there are about five incidents in Beijing requiring ice-diving rescues.

"We can't use common sense to understand why people fall through the ice," said Zheng. "On some occasions, people in danger of drowning after falling into the water may have simply wanted to take a shortcut across an ice surface or to retrieve some items from where they were ice fishing."

The team of 16 firefighters is always in a race against time and has implemented a 24-hour on-call system.

"The time window for such rescue operations is limited," said Zheng. "From receiving the alarm to dispatching our firefighting team to the rescue site, at least 15 minutes are required. A person cannot endure that long in the frigid waters of Beijing."

In 2012, a practical diving skills training program was introduced to enhance the professional skills of the team's firefighters.

The Beijing Municipal Public Security Fire Corps, which became the Beijing Fire Rescue Corps in 2018 as part of a reshuffle, also supplied high-quality equipment to the diving firefighters.