Diver Missing, Lake Pleasant, Phoenix AZ Mar 13, 2014

[Divegoose]

Can anyone explain why they would use an ROV to recover the body from only 248 feet?

Quite simply - safety of the recovery team. :diver: As with any rescue/recovery mission, safety of the rescuer is the number
one priority. No sense having a rescuer become part of the problem instead of part of the solution.

How many "dive rescue teams" have the training, equipment, and ability to dive to that depth and bring a deceased diver up.

We had a diving fatality in Nanaimo last fall. Diver was located at 256 feet, by a very experienced, and knowledgeable technical diver.
He knows the area like the back of his hand. Tied a line off to the deceased diver, and a team pulled him to the surface. Had this technical
diver not been available, no doubt an ROV would have been deployed.

Stay safe & dive safe !!

Divegoose

 

[Jax]

For those of you not familiar with Lake Pleasant:

It's fed by mountain run-off, so is very cold except the first few feet from the surface.

Due to the constant sunlight, there is a lot of particulate. It tends to cause layers when there hasn't been much rain/meltoff lately.

It gets dark quickly - like at 40'. You can drop down and suddenly be in dark that is worse than any silt-out, because there are seldom margins.

Here is an excellent write-up about it: Submerged Old Waddell Dam

They built the new, higher dam downstream, then sliced up the old dam. They placed charges in the slices, and blew out sections. Lots of jumbled concrete and rebar to become entangled upon. Add that it is normally darker than one can imagine, and that even the brightest Halogen can't 'see' but 3-4 feet normally, and there's a good reason to use an ROV.

 

[aikidude]

For what it is worth, the way this second group handled the situation after they realized they had a problem made all the difference in the world in respect to the successful outcome of the recovery as opposed to the first fatality.

For what it's worth, you have no idea what you're talking about when it comes to the first incident. What are you basing that statement on anyway?

 

[tracydr]

For what it's worth, you have no idea what you're talking about when it comes to the first incident. What are you basing that statement on anyway?

I don't see any reference to the first rebreather accident in this statement. I suspect he was talking about the previous diver that has never been located at the dam. He was OC.

 

[aikidude]

I don't see any reference to the first rebreather accident in this statement. I suspect he was talking about the previous diver that has never been located at the dam. He was OC.

My issue isn't with the rebreather comment, it's with his statement about how that 1st group handled the incident. That's what he has no idea about. What is he basing THAT statement on? (And that 1st incident happened 3 years, 5 months and 1 day ago, not a 'couple of years ago', to be precise.)

---------- Post added March 17th, 2014 at 12:36 PM ----------

For what it's worth, you have no idea what you're talking about when it comes to the first incident. What are you basing that statement on anyway?

Come on Capt Pete, back up your statement! Since you weren't there, show the source of this false statement!

 

[Capt. Pete]

Aikidude,

My observation was from the recovery side of both incidents and has nothing to do with the accidents or the victims involved. A solid starting point for a recovery team to start their work is critical to the successful outcome of any search.

 

[aikidude]

Aikidude,

My observation was from the recovery side of both incidents and has nothing to do with the accidents or the victims involved. A solid starting point for a recovery team to start their work is critical to the successful outcome of any search.

They had a SOLID point to start from, no different than the incident last week. Again, you're working off hearsay and misinformation on that 1st incident.

---------- Post added March 18th, 2014 at 03:19 PM ----------

Aikidude,

My observation was from the recovery side of both incidents and has nothing to do with the accidents or the victims involved. A solid starting point for a recovery team to start their work is critical to the successful outcome of any search.

I'm requesting that you cite the source of your information on the 1st incident per rule #6 of this forum:
[(6) If you are presenting information from a source other than your own eyes and ears, cite the source.]

I know you didn't have 'eyes of ears' on this incident, since I WAS THERE, I want to know where you're getting this misinformation.

 

[Crabb]

Does anyone know what happened yet? Did he have an equipment malfunction or an unrelated medical problem of some sort?

 

[Chuck Tribolet]

They had a SOLID point to start from, no different than the incident last week. Again, you're working off hearsay and misinformation on that 1st incident.

The most recent victim was on a rebreather. When a rebreather diver becomes unconcious and the mouthpiece comes out of their mouth, the loop floods and they become several pounds (10?) negative, which will tend to keep them in one place, and easier to find. The victim who was never recovered was on open circuit, and would have had much less weight change, and more tendency to drift.

Chuck

 

[Tom H.]

IIRC the diver who was lost in 2010 was one of five divers. I want to say that four of the divers were very experienced but the victim was not. They were also diving the dam at a time of year when the visibility in the lake was pretty bad, October I think. Visibility at the lake can be less than 15' down to a few feet. The search was so difficult that the Sheriff's UAV actually became entangled and almost lost.

It was a year or two ago when the diver on the rebreather died. He was in shallow water, waiting for his dive buddy to get wet. When she got into the water he was at the bottom. He was still alive when they pulled him out, but died several days later. I don't know if they ever reported the exact cause, speculation was CO2 poisoning. I think he was a Captain in the Guard. I dove with a kid that was in his outfit a few weeks after the accident.

I can shed some light on this most recent accident. The visibility at the lake is the best I have seen in a couple of years. Last weekend it was at least 35' down to about 40'. A few weeks back I was down to 100+ feet and even at that depth viz was close to 30'. I can't say what the visibility would have been at 170'+ but it is likely the visibility conditions for the two dam incidents were very different. And that might explain why this diver was recovered so quickly and the 2010 diver is still missing.