Willey work in the Anthropology Department’s Human Identification Laboratory at Chico State.Īs certified instructors for California’s Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST), the lab faculty assist in two-week homicide investigation courses across the state, largely for law enforcement and medical legal professionals.īut they also train both undergraduate and graduate students in forensic science. Professor Ashley Kendell, left, and Professor Emeritus P. … So anytime you increase the forensic science workforce and increase the capabilities of the state to understand the advances in technology and methodology, you also reduce the number of unidentified victims, the number of unclaimed victims and the number of crimes that go unsolved and become cold cases.” “The remains that we have as casework tend to be some of the hardest conditions for getting identified. “Across the country, we have an ever-increasing need for professionals who work in forensic science because of the value it brings to some of the hardest types of investigations,” says Colleen Milligan, Ph.D., HIL co-director and Department of Anthropology chair.

But it is also key to ensuring the state’s current and future professionals are effectively trained in the field. Currently working with 46 counties across California, the lab’s faculty team participates in recovery missions, helps identify recovered human remains and develops search and rescue methodologies. The public safety diving training goes beyond a general scuba diving certification to prepare divers for the heightened risks and challenges associated with underwater recovery missions.Ĭalifornia State University, Chico’s Department of Anthropology has served an integral role in cases of missing persons, criminal investigations and mass fatality events. With two instructors now able to train others in public safety diving, the campus hopes to begin offering the 50-hour certification course to HSU students, first responders and other members of the public who are affiliated with formal dive recovery teams as early as next summer. In August 2021, the HSU volunteers, along with two more campus scuba instructors, completed the formal Public Safety Diver certification course, with Alvarez and Monk also earning their instructor rating. “And the family took it upon themselves to fundraise-which has been the big hurdle for creating this training-to pay for the training and to start to get the team off the ground.” “We were able to recover his body and bring closure to the family,” Alvarez says. Nicolas Brunner Memorial Dive Award to help students complete their dive training. Go Fund Me campaign to establish an official underwater recovery team and created the

The plans for the training program came after volunteer members of what is now the Humboldt Bay Fire Dive Rescue and Recovery Team-including Alvarez, Lecturer and Boating Safety Officer Steve Monk, Lecturer Hanna Johnston and Scuba Instructor Leah Stamper-conducted a search mission following the death of kayaker Nicholas Brunner in 2020. … Knowing a location where people can get the training is going to hopefully be helpful not only to Humboldt County, but surrounding counties and regions with a need to train search and recovery divers.”Ī diver-in-training practices body recovery at the Humboldt State pool by searching for a submerged mannequin while wearing a black-out mask to simulate zero visibility. “It's a very technical, very high-risk thing to go out and do. “There's a need for first responders, whether they're members of fire departments, sheriff's deputies or volunteers working for dive search and recovery teams, to have some sort of formal training in public safety diving so they can do it safely,” says Rich Alvarez, HSU lecturer and diving safety officer.

Humboldt State University and Humboldt Bay Fire are working together to launch a new To ensure the region has its own trained and certified search and rescue dive team, Until recently, those missions were conducted by volunteer citizen divers at great personal risk. Since the 1990s, Humboldt County-a region with bodies of water ranging from the ocean and the bay to lakes and rivers-has gone without an official underwater search and rescue team.

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