DENMARK – The current in the Saco River was treacherous, the visibility practically nonexistent when the first two divers, both volunteer firefighters, arrived Aug. 8.

A frantic woman had just called dispatch from her cell phone, saying her fiancee had possibly drowned.

Even though neither man had been on a real dive before, Bridgton firefighter Andrew Beebe and Denmark firefighter Andrew Moore didn’t hesitate.

“The boys decided to go for it,” said Kenny Richardson, Denmark fire chief and organizer of the recently reformed Cumberland-Oxford Dive Team. Soon, four other members of the team arrived.

They suited up, strapped air tanks on their backs, and entered the current, tethered together by a rope.

Forty-five minutes had elapsed since the 3 p.m. call came in. It would take two hours before the closest diver from the Maine Warden Service arrived from Berwick.

It would take another day of diving before the body of Ronald Sheldon, 41, of Amesbury, Mass., was found.

When the search stretched into a second day, almost all of the 12-member team, in training since April, showed up to help out. They eventually ran a rope across the river, and did a grid search, using divers tethered to a canoe, while the Warden Service used the Fryeburg Search and Rescue airboat.

Comprised of firefighters from Denmark, Harrison, Brownfield and Bridgton, along with a police officer and resident from Fryeburg, the team earned its public safety diving licenses in June from Mike Bridges, owner of the Dive Locker in Lyman. Bridges uses a combination of lectures, six pool sessions, and six open water dives, with one open water night dive. Next January, the team will pursue their ice-diving certification.

Just three weeks before the drowning, members of the team met with Warden Service personnel and were given the go-ahead to respond to drowning emergencies, Richardson said.

“And then, bang . . . we get this call,” he said. Warden Service divers later described the dive as one of the most difficult they’d ever undertaken.

“They were an outstanding group to work with,” Game Warden Lt. Nat Berry said of the Cumberland-Oxford Dive Team. “They were very professional, and non-territorial, and able to work their own areas of the river, while we worked ours. It made it flow very easily.”

The Warden Service only has 10 trained divers for the entire state, so a two-hour response time to a drowning emergency is not unusual, Berry said. “It’s good to see other groups taking up some of the slack” in responding to water-related emergencies, he said.

Richardson said the team’s main goal “is to try to save lives,” even though the men realize that’s not always possible. A summer resident, Will Gallien, has donated two Jet Skis to the Denmark Fire Department for water rescues, and the team has been practicing with them, he said.

The dive team was originally created around 10 years ago, Richardson said, after three men known to area firefighters went through the ice one winter and drowned. “The boys took it very hard,” he said.

At least 10 firefighters went for dive training then, including winter diving, but over the years membership gradually dropped back to only three divers, and the team was seldom called upon, Richardson said.

Last winter, Richardson and others decided to reform the group, which includes three members of the original team and nine others. Richardson himself does not dive, but acts as “overseer” of the group, he said.

“I’ll stand on top, but I don’t want to go under,” Richardson said. “It takes a special breed to be a public safety diver, I say.”

Members of the team are, from Denmark, Joel Lusky, Andrew Moore and Brian McBurnie; from Brownfield, Phil Richardson, Jeremy Kiley and David Eaton; from Bridgton, Dan Knowles and Andrew Beebe; from Harrison, Henry Hudson III and Scott Andrews; and from Fryeburg, police officer Mike McAllister and resident Scott Gregory.