Cole Yeatts shouted instructions to 10 Secret Service agents
gathered on the beach under the afternoon sun – nine men, one woman, all lean.
They were learning another way to save the president of the United States.
“Who are we looking for and what are we looking at?” Yeatts
asked. “Victim and …?”
“Waves,” answered an agent.
“Correct: waves,” Yeatts echoed.
Five of the agents lined up behind five
2-foot-long orange rescue buoys and pairs of swim fins propped in the
sand.
Yeatts, director of Kitty Hawk Ocean Rescue, counted down:
“One, two, three, go!”
The agents grabbed their gear and sprinted into the surf.
One tripped and fell, but quickly recovered. All struggled to slip on the fins
as waves broke across their backs. Instructors representing victims stood in
chest-deep water about 100 yards offshore.
“We don’t make it easy on them,” said Sean Donlon, a special
agent and water rescue instructor. “The protectee does not care how much
training we have – he just wants to be rescued.”
In a real emergency, the victim could be former presidents
George H.W. Bush, who loves boating at the family property in Kennebunkport,
Maine, or Barack Obama, who loves to body surf in the large waves in Hawaii
where he grew up, or a member of the Donald Trump family at Mar-A-Lago in Palm
Beach, Fla.
These agents voluntarily exchange dark suits and earpieces
for swimsuits and sunscreen. They pull duty on beaches in Hawaii or
Tahiti rather than wearing a bulletproof vest while guarding a motorcade in the
middle of a crowded city. A regular detail of agents guards the person being
protected at the same time the water-rescue agents also keep watch, Donlon
said.
Three weeks and three days of intense instruction and tests
begin at a Washington, D.C., pool. Some don’t pass the initial swim test of
covering 800 meters in 16 minutes, or the requirement to swim a length of a
25-meter pool underwater four separate times with a minute break between laps.
On the beach, the Kitty Hawk rescue team grills them for two
days. They learn to retrieve a victim using a variety of grips and bring them
to shore through the unforgiving Outer Banks surf where at least six people
drowned last year. The class learns to recognize rip currents, and may
intentionally dive into the strong outward flow to get to a victim more
quickly.
“This is not like swimming a pool,” Yeatts said.
The group then goes to the Coast Guard’s Air Station
Elizabeth City for three days’ training with the nation’s best rescue swimmers.
There they learn to deploy from helicopters and wrestle victims into rescue
baskets.
Elsewhere, agents also train for white-water rescues. Former
Vice President Dick Cheney loves to fish in rivers with rapids.
“This is one of the most demanding fields of Secret Service
training,” Donlon said.
Next fall, the same group learns emergency medical
treatment, a first for Secret Service agents. They will learn how to
handle spinal injuries and heart attacks as well as jellyfish stings.
Of the 3,200 Secret Service agents stationed around the
globe, 75 serve on the water-rescue detail, Donlon said. Typically, about 10
percent are women.
Many of the trainees have been lifeguards or college
swimmers. Most are in their mid-30s with experience as an agent, Special Agent
Scott Healy said.
The Secret Service began water-rescue training during the
George H.W. Bush administration, Donlon said. The Coast Guard conducted it in
the early years and still oversees the overall curriculum. The class began
coming to Kitty Hawk in 2003 at the recommendation of a senior Coast Guard
official.
Shared from First in Freedom Daily
