Unknown Two missing Lacs de l'Eau d'Heure, two bodies found - Plate Taille, Belgium

[DandyDon]

The bodies have not yet been identified and may have passed thru hydro-electric turbines.

Deux plongeurs disparus aux Lacs de l'Eau d'Heure: deux corps ont été retrouvés

Les recherches ont repris ce samedi à 10h sur le site de la Plate Taille aux Lacs de l'Eau d'Heure pour tenter de retrouver deux plongeurs disparus depuis jeudi soir. Des restes humains ont été retrouvés ce samedi midi.

www.rtl.be

Google translation...

The search resumed this Saturday at 10 a.m. on the Plate Taille site at the Lacs de l'Eau d'Heure to try to find two divers missing since Thursday evening. Human remains were found this Saturday afternoon.

The search resumed around 10 a.m. this Saturday to try to find the two divers who disappeared in Froidchapelle. Two civil protection teams went diving again where the two Liège divers disappeared. While the search focused on one area in particular - that downstream of the dam, at the level of the turbines - human remains were found around 12:30 p.m.

" This morning, we resumed our search with civil protection divers. Quite quickly, we discovered the body of a first victim in the immediate vicinity of the dam. Secondly, we also found the body of the second victim more or less a kilometer from the dam, on the banks ", declares David Rimaux, police commissioner at the missing persons unit of the federal police.

An autopsy is planned for this Sunday in order to know with certainty whether these human remains belong to the two missing divers. “ The condition of the bodies does not allow us to identify them. The autopsy will allow us to determine with certainty that these are indeed the victims sought ,” confirms the police commissioner.

These human remains could confirm the theory according to which the two divers could have been carried away by the current and passed through the turbines.

The families have been notified. The parquet too. The remains have not yet been identified. The work will continue this afternoon, as will the research elsewhere. It is also a question of understanding the circumstances of this tragedy, how the divers could have been carried away by this current.

Material discovered the night before

The previous evening, material had already been discovered in the water. "We were able to find diving equipment, in particular oxygen bottles and a vest belonging to one of the two divers. The civil protection divers, who are nevertheless experts in the matter, were able to determine that the equipment that "We found them to belong to two people ," says David Rimaux, police commissioner at the missing persons unit of the federal police.

A night dive

The two divers born in 1964 and 1977, originally from the Liège region, went missing after carrying out a night dive Thursday evening around 5:00 p.m. on the Plate Taille site at the Lacs de l'Eau d'Heure. "This is a site which is not at all intended for such an activity. They seem to be used to diving at the Eau d'Heure Lakes" , commented the Charleroi prosecutor's office on Friday morning.

The son of one of the divers alerted the authorities, worried not to have any news from his father. “He himself went there and discovered his father’s vehicle parked there ,” added the prosecution. “The diving equipment was no longer present in the cabin.”

Major resources deployed

Civil protection, the DVI (Disaster Victim Identification) and divers have been mobilized since the night of Thursday to Friday. A helicopter equipped with thermal cameras also flew over the area to conduct new, more in-depth searches.

"The climatic conditions are not favorable. We have a fairly strong surface current, we can also see the small waves. They are not that big, but when we are in the water, we really feel deviated by this current. Also knowing that with the heavy downpours that we have had in recent days, visibility is reduced and sometimes even zero" , explained Christian Renard, fire lieutenant at the Hainaut-Est emergency zone.

“The investigative duties will determine whether the dive was an organized dive, a planned dive, or if it was prohibited ,” he concluded.

 

[BoltSnap]

Crazy, there aren't supposed to dive there.

 

[JMarc]

Somme comments:
- I last dove their 25 years ago or so. My comments are sourced in both my memory (and thus may be wrong to aging related issue) and in the relevant thread on a French diving forum.
- the lake is a popular dive site with, IIRC, features installed for the purpose of divers' enjoyment, the permanent starting point is relatively close to the dam.
- the lake is a totally artificial one, water is pumping in at time of low electricity need and the used to produce electricity at time of higher demand. The switches in direction is automatically driven by the demand and are not predictable from a diver POV. There are area where diving is dangerous due to the strong currents.
- there is currently a lack of publicly available information, and I'd like to warn against judging from clues in what is available. Some clues may have been introduced involuntarily be the reporting (I'd not deduce anything from the mention of "oxygen tanks" for instance).

 

[JMarc]

Crazy, there aren't supposed to dive there.

That's an impression that the reporting leave but the reporting also leave the impression that the lake is closed to diving, which it isn't. There is a dive center there with lot of diving done every week with divers coming from at least Belgium and France.

I've even done night dives there, but 25 years ago, and the diver center was open for such dives the day we did it. I don't know what kind of regulations there are about diving from other places and during the night (I'm not even sure they started from elsewhere but I presume the dive center was closed -- see edit for more information).

They for sure entered an area of the lake where they shouldn't have gone, but there is nothing tangible which IMO allows to think that it was their plan and not the consequence of disorientation or of another accident.

Edit: here is a map of the relevant area with marking of the places reserved for diving, the dam is in the upper right. There is strong hints in the rest of the dive center web site that diving outside the activities of the center has to be authorized explicitly by the local authorities, so one can be pretty sure that they didn't dive at a time when they were allowed.

 

[andromedakun]

One thing that could be important in this incident is that there has been a lot of rain in Belgium in the last couple of weeks. This could have created a lot more current in the dam area then normal.

If, as what the articles suggests, the divers went in without authorization and the dam operators were not aware that divers were in the lake, they could have opened the valves more to get the level lower and thus created even more current.

I think I read somewhere that the bodies were found close to the turbines so it appears that they were at least sucked to an area they shouldn't have been in.

 

[Sunn]

The dam is operated remotely by Total Energie, and indeed, there's no way of knowing that divers are in the area, whether they are authorized or not - this is not a point for discussion. Activation of the turbines depends on the operator, and follows demand from the electricity grid.

On the day of the accident, three of the 4 turbines were in operation, together generating a flow of 106 cubic metres per second.

Equipment debris and bodies were recovered after passing through the turbines, up to a distance of almost one km.

Very sad... condolences to their family.

 

[Jared0425]

Something else could have happened medically and their remains went through the dam/ turbines.

 

[JMarc]

Something else could have happened medically and their remains went through the dam/ turbines.

Yes, that was something I wanted to consider.

Note that according the later reporting, they not only dove when the dive center was closed, they also dove outside of the areas where the regulations restrict diving. That's becoming really unwise.