U.S. Coast Guard Certification Course

This past weekend Melbourne Beach and Indialantic Marine Rescue Team members completed a U.S. Coast Guard certification course. Marine Rescue International, LLC was hired to come down and to teach new search and rescue methods, crew recourse management, efficient radio communications with local boaters and the U.S. Coast Guard as well as equipment efficiency analysis and recommendations.

This course was intensive and credit should be given to those members who planned time away from their own families and jobs in order to raise the level of service that MBVFD provides on a daily basis for our community.

The course proved it’s worth with the successful mitigation of an actual marine rescue call which came in during the training. The Coast Guard was notified, assets were assigned and local boaters were made aware of an over turned sail boat in the Indian River. The boat and crew were found quickly through utilizing a “Victor Sierra” search pattern, which was learned earlier in the class. All crews and vessels were recovered with no injuries or loss of property. The rescue went so well, that Coast Guard Station Port Canaveral recognized our efforts and have since made plans to utilize our services for this area, as they feel that we are a highly competent and well trained marine rescue unit which is critical for this area as a Coast Guard response is over an hour away in either direction from our community.

We are proud to have completed this course and have plans to include any other members who would like to earn the distinction of being on the Marine Rescue Team of the Melbourne Beach Volunteer Fire Department.

If you are interested in joining the Melbourne Beach Volunteer Fire Dept, please feel free to contact us directly at fireofficer@mbvfd.com.

The MBVFD Marine Rescue Team is above and beyond what is expected of regular fire fighters. Those wishing to participate will be taught how we operate each of our rescue boats, patient recovery, and, of course, Search and Rescue. The Marine Rescue trainings are held at least once a month and are also “mixed in” to the Tuesday night training schedule as well.

Ocean Launch
Ocean Recovery
River Rescue