Divers killed inspecting intake pipes

[Lucy's Diver]

Surface supplied doesn't always work. A friend of mine is a dive supervisor, he's an old man in the business, with 30 years experience. He's disgusting, he grabs his gut and pinches maybe a 1/2 inch.

He was working a project and the umbilical started whipping off the deck, dragged everything attached with it to the side of the ship, then the umbilical snapped. He had to stop the backup divers from going in. It was in the gulf oil patch, someone opened a valve miles away, slurp.

He'd been living on a 26' boat out in California for over a year when I gave him a ride back to Houston, where he told god he'd never do commercial again. He's back in the saddle, doing what he does.

No one ever hears about these folks and what they do.

How does that prove surface supply "doesn't always work?" The surface supply was working all the way till when the line snapped. An untethered diver on scuba would have been "slurped" up as well, the only difference being no one would have known until the guy didn't surface a half hour later.
I just can't imagine that this was a job that should not have been performed on at least hard line coms and aga, if not hard hat and surface supply. Hard line coms and aga really is not that much more time to set up than straight scuba.

 

[BladesRobinson]

From the SAR DIVER FORUM AT: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SAR-Diver/

Video is now available on the two divers killed at the Dos Amigos Pumping Station in California.

Visit: abc30.com: Aqueduct Drowning Victim Family Reaction 5/10/08
From the site above, click on the "WATCH VIDEO" link.

The full written report is available at:
http://www.water.ca.gov/news/newsreleases/121407divers.pdf

 

[SCUBAJENNIFER]

Wow that took a long time...

Thanks for posting Blades.

 

[MontereyCADiver]

Blades,

Thanks for the follow-up.

Jeff

 

[Yotsie]

Thanks for the follow-up Blades...... I was very difficult to watch video number 2 and hear the upper management do their typical bullet dodging. Their people died... They need to be held accountable!!

 

[Upstate Scuba OWI]

thank blades for the update and the $15,000 fine from osha was not enough.

 

[chilie]

wow- a waste and generally avoidable.

 

[chilie]

and it should be 15K for every minute they were under water with no bubbles surfacing

 

[james croft]

Unfortunately this type of diving is going on every day. I have seen it done at my job and have participated in it, though at the time I did not realize how dangerous some of the diving we did was. Without the proper equipment, methods and training, divers should stick to taking pictures of nudibranches and harassing manatees. The more education I have gotten, the less I will ever do anything relating to commercial work.
I dive surface supply with comm but do not go where there is the possibility of a pressure differentials. I also will not let my dive team members participate in such nonsense.

It can be done safely but the pumps need to be locked out, pressure differentials checked, have surface supplied air , back-up divers at readiness to dive and more than one back-up plan and equipment for the job.
Thanks for keeping us posted Blades.

 

[RescueDiver2407]

There was an incident similar to this last summer at one of the dams near us. A diver was down doing work on a coffer dam (temporary dam) around an intake so that the area could be drained and repairs made to the intake. Sounds good right? Unfortunately the intake was not shut down as this coffer dam was being installed/finished. The diver was sucked between the cracks in the coffer dam, his reg ripped from his mouth, and he drowned. No tether, no back up diver, etc etc etc. And of course the quote from the "tender" that was there... "well we've done this before like this".

I agree that there is a place for divers, Public safety divers, and commercial divers. We all can intermingle on land, but shouldn't be in the same water together when we are working.