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Troup County has a new dive team. Thanks to a boat donated by the sheriff’s office and training approved by the Board of Commissioners, the Troup County Fire Department has implemented a 12-member dive team.

EMS Director Zac Steele said the idea to bring a dive team back to Troup County came from a meeting with School Superintendent Dr. Rachel Hazel and County Manager Eric Mosley. 

“We started talking about some different water responses and how we might find some funding for a dive team. We were able to put that together,” Steele said.

Steele said they were able to use American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funding to pay for the training and about $50,000 in Special Purpose Local Option Tax (SPLOST) money to fund all the equipment.

Sheriff James Woodruff donated a 17-foot Carolina Skiff boat from the Troup County Sheriff’s Office to the fire department that was retrofitted to be used by the dive team.

The ARPA funds paid for 12 firefighters to go through the training.

“These guys had to go through an extremely physical, taxing swim test to be eligible to go through the dive program,” Steele said. “It was broken down into four phases for a total of about 160 hours worth of training that they went through.”

Steele said the team did deep dive training in Florida, along with training on West Point Lake.

West Point Lake averages three to four drownings a year, so there is a need for the recovery team.

“We’re seeing a lot more boat traffic, lake traffic, with water sports, wakeboarding, and entertainment happening on West Point Lake,” Steele said. “So we’re increasing our water presence out there. … We’d like to have a swift water team in the future to be able to handle actual rescues instead of just recovery.”

“We’re very proud of our new dive team. They’re going to be an amazing resource for this department, both internally here in Troup County, but also available to outside agencies that may need some help,” Fire Chief Michael Strickland said.

“We’re trying to develop more of a presence out on West Point Lake. When I came to Troup County, I realized that was a glaring deficiency we had as a department, that here we have this huge lake that encompasses a lot of land area in Troup County, and we’re responsible for it. But as a fire department, we had no way to get out there to help anybody but to commandeer somebody’s boat if we showed up on the docks,” Strickland said.

“The sheriff was gracious enough to donate one of his boats to us, which we have outfitted to meet our needs, and it gives us a presence out there,” he said.

Strickland said they plan to monitor the lake as much as they can and be proactive. 

“We just don’t launch it when there’s a call for an emergency. We have gone out for fishing tournaments that are going on every weekend just to have a presence out there. I want the boat to be out there on busy holiday weekends just as a visual reminder to people out there that the Troup County Fire Department’s out here to help us if we need them,” Strickland said. “We want to be proactive as well as being reactive out there.”