Two brothers die in Lehi (Utah?)

[pipedope]

The pipe is only 9' in diameter but the water depth is 100'.

It is a bit like a cave, you might have only a few feet of water over your head but lots of rock.

If you dive in pipes you have rocks in you head or you are getting paid for the dive, or both.

 

[jiveturkey]

Thanks for the explanations guys. I guess this falls under the category of doing something just to say you did it. There can't be anything worthwhile to see in there.

How fast would the water be moving through that thing?

 

[DeepScuba]

Thanks Zept.

There's no doubt about it, that's 100ft, and there's no 9ft about it!

Question number 2. They talk about the screen covering the exit. If that picture is true, then they would have had to be going against the "flow",.........no?
Or they got through the screen for the ENTRY?

Man looks nasty doesn't it? <Shudder>

 

[ALAN243]

what is not mentioned in the article was that there gear was over 10 yrs old and they had a combined dive number of 35 OW dives under there belt. This is purley a case where the testosterone took over. They could have exited out the other end but from the looks of the pipe they got silted out and disoriented, there bodies were found approx 150 ft from each other with both of the 80 cf tanks dry. they had no buisness in that pipe at all. it's unfortunate that this happened, this is the first scuba death in that canal but 14 other people have died in it from various things. After talking to one of the rescurers there was no entanglement.. let me know if you have any other questions I live less than 5 min from the siphon and know alot of the guys on the recovery team. You also have to remember that we are at 5250 ft elevation here so this was not only a deep dive in an enclosed enviorment but also an altitude dive.

 

[BigJetDriver]

pipedope once bubbled...
This is a sad event but at least the rescue team divers did not add to the tragedy.

This was NOT a cave or a cave dive, it is an inverted siphon and is a commercial dive requiring the full kit of gear and people.

There are several dangers to diving into an inverted siphon including all of the junk (cars, appliances, trees etc.) that ends up in the bottom. There is the depth and the fact that you can't easily get out. On a sport dive you don't have control over the water so what happens if the water authority turns on the flow?

A few years ago two salvage divers died in an inverted siphon and two rescue divers died trying to rescue them.

I got my handle because I get paid to dive into pipes. It is not something to do for *fun*.

;-0

I cannot agree more, Michael! This was an extremely sad event! Two very fine young men were lost, and it was so preventable. Like Michael (who signs himself "Pipedope"---a self-deprecating handle for someone who does a very tough job), I get paid to do this stuff, as well as to teach people (for IANTD) how to do it safely. Our curriculum involves a similar case (perhaps the one Michael refers to) in which all of the wrong decisions were made, and several people died, including members of the recovery teams. At least here, the recovery team made the right decision.

As I constantly say to the teams, black-water recovery work, ESPECIALLY in confined environments is interesting, definitely challenging, and highly technical in nature, but it is not "FUN" diving! This IS one where you really, really need to leave it to the pros!:grad:

 

[raviepoo]

I assume they were certified divers. There is no mention of thier certification in the article. If they were certified, surely they were taught not to exceed the limits of their training. What could they have been thinking?

I feel bad for the family, especially for the wife and baby that one of them left behind.

I hope the family doesn't think they're going to be compensated by a lawsuit. What these two guys did was the equivalent of suicide.

 

[aujax]

Does anyone know exactly how they died? I'm assuming drowning, but i'm wondering what their main mistake was - errors in calculating depth, getting lost due to silting, nitrogen narcosis, all of the above? I guess it's probably impossible to tell exactly what happened...

 

[BigJetDriver]

Of course, drowning is the end result, but given their equipment and the available gas they had "on-board", they did not have enough gas to operate safely in those conditions. This was an extremely sad example of a gas-management planning failure.

 

[divemed06]

Hopefully this will never ever happen again! Prior to a dive, if you have the slightest thought of " Maybe I shouldn't be doing this" or "I'm not sure what I'm getting myself into", than please don't do it. It just isn't worth it...losing your life is not worth it...having a child grow up without a father or mother is not worth it. Dive smart and dive safe...know that's worth it.

 

[John C. Ratliff]

I guess my reaction to this is to think that diving has built itself up on a perception of danger. If you look at some of the shark films, you can see the producers have hyped the film's dangers to the divers. That is a common theme in diving, and something diving has had to live with for many, many years. It has also caused many tragedies, such as this one.

When I got into diving, it was not for the adrenalin rush, but to explore a biological world few can see. I found the thrill was not in doing something "dangerous," but in breathing underwater, seeing aquatic life no one has ever seen before (yes, I found a new amphipod in the 1970s, and a new commensal relationship between sculpin, the rose anemone, and amphipods on the rose anemone). It is still quite possible to literally see new life forms, new relationships, new interactions between animals and their environment; that is what "turns me on" about diving. It isn't doing something dangerous, it's being able to simply be underwater with my eyes open, seeing things.

I think we need to talk to TV producers, the National Geographic Explorer, etc., to get off the "danger" hype, and look to the positive reasons for being underwater. If we don't, these needless deaths will continue.

SeaRat