Hello Dennis,
 Printed from Underwater Magazine. For the Association of Diving Contractors
 Magazine. Spring 1997 Issue.
 "A TRAGEDY IN CENTRAL WASHINGTON
 By Dee Hoffmann
        Four divers are dead; the result of a job and subsequent rescue
attempt gone wrong. The tragedy began Saturday, March 15 when two
recreationally trained scuba divers entered a half-mile long, underground,
water-filled tunnel to complete some work for a local irrigation district.
They were without a stand-by diver, without a tended line, without
communications, and without surface supplied air. After the divers failed to
emerge, two rescue scuba divers went down- only to meet the same deadly fate.
        To bring water to local farmland, the 95 mile Roza Irrigation Canal
in Central Washington traverses canyons and valleys by means of seven
underground siphons. Abandoned and stolen cars are routinely dumped in the
canal, and the swift water washes them into the inverted siphons or under-
ground pipelines. The divers were hired by the Roza Irrigation District to
hook tow lines to the cars that were trapped inside the 13 foot tall siphon
tunnels.
        On this fateful day, the canal was dry, but he underground siphon
Number Four was dangerously full of cold 40-degree murky water. The divers
broke through ice at the mouth of the cave-like tunnel and descended into
the 2,310 foot long, 104 foot deep siphon. They carried one tank of air
each and a shared emergency tank. Although one diver was dressed in a
drysuit, the other diver wore a wetsuit which is inadequate for cold water
diving. It was only when they did not return after an hour that rescue
workers were called.
        The rescue scuba divers also apparently underestimated the hazards
of diving the deep, cold, confined space. They dove with the same amount of
air as the first team, and without a safety line or communications. After
they failed to return, a third team  of divers was sent in to pull them out
of the tunnel. The preceeding rescue divers, like the first two divers,
had tragically run out of air and perished.
        These deaths have brought to light questions about the district's
hiring of recreational scuba divers to perform commercial work and the
diver's lack of commercial diving training. Questions have also surfaced
about safety practices.
        "This was an accident waiting to happen," said John Ritter of Divers
Institute of Technology, an accredited commercial dive school. "Recreational
divers continue to be hired for work which they are unqualified to perform.
Some contracts or bid requests simply stipulate that the worker must be a
certified diver. Certified for what? The training and certification a
recreational diver obtains differs greatly from the hundreds of training
hours a commercial diver receives."
        Three recreational dive training agencies, PADI, NAUI, and YMCA,
clearly maintain that diving certification under the auspices should not
be considered  adequated training for underwater commercial work.
        Even more troubling is the fact that the divers failed to follow
safety regulations, and it cost them their lives. As set forth by the
U.S. Department of Labor, Occupational Safety and Health Administration
(OSHA) the Safety  Standards for Commercial Diving Operaitons includes a
combination of specific, functional and situational requirements.
        According to the standards, "scuba diving shall not be conducted at
depths deeper than 100 feet or outside the no decompression limits unless
a decompression chamber is ready for use." The depth of this dive was 104
feet; the nearest decompressions chamber was more than 100 miles away.
        The standards continue that scuba diving shall not be conducted
"on enclosed or physically-confining spaces unless line tended." Neither
the divers sent dow to do the work nor the rescue divers were tethered to
another dive team member on the surface.
        All four divers are reported to have died from lack of air. The
regulations require that each diver must carry a reserve breathing gas
supply, however only one member from each team had an emergency tank.
It was apparent that they had also miscalculated the amount of air they
would need.
        When conducting a commercial diver operation the regulation requires
a minimum of three persons on the dive team, The designated person in charge
(diving supervisor), diver, and tender. When operations planning reveals
any form of underwater hazard, or when diving in excess of 100 feet or
involving in-water decompression, a stand-by diver must be added to the dive
team as a fourth member. An additional diver must be stationed at the
underwater point of entry when diving is conducted in enclosed  or confined
spaces, and a positive means of communication must exist with the diver(s)
within that space.
        None of the divers had any means of communication. In fact, there
was no one with any diving experience monitoring topside when the first
divers went into the water.
        With deadly consequences, the minimum manning requirement under
OSHA's current commerdcial diving standard was not followed.
        "A commercial dive team would not have entered the irrigation
canal siphon with scuba gear, without communications, and without adequate
dive team personnel." says Randy Cummings, district dive coordinator for the
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in The Dalles, OR. "The dive was too deep,
penetration in to the siphon was too long, and a diver couldn't make an
easy ascent to the surface.
        "A dive of this magnitude," Cummings continued. "Would probably
have a six man crew, a recompression chamber on site, surface supplied air,
communications, a primary working diver to hook the tow lines to the
vehicles and one or two other divers tending him along the way."
        Municipalities and other agencies should take heed by recognizing
the dangerous liability of hiring a recreational diver to do commercial
diving work. OSHA regulations state that an employer obligation exists for
compliance with all provisions of the diving standards.
        Furthermore, personnel requirements under OSHA 1910.401(a)(1)
specifies "each dive member shall have the experience or training necessary
to perform assigned  tasks in a safe and healthful manner." Given the fact
that recreational diving agencies state that their certification does not
qualify a diver to do commercial work, it follows that municipalities and
agencies who hire recreational divers or cite recreational diving
certification as a criteria for employment may face possible OSHA violations.
        "Although this catastrophy was the result of a series of bad
judgements, the ultimate responsibility for the tradedy falls upon the
district, the people who hired these divers," comments Tim Beaver of
Globa Diving and Salvage. "They should have known better than to hire
unqualified personnel. Their alleged ignorance was the first fatal error in
the disastrous chain of events."
        Is it an issue of ignorance? According to Beaver, the practice of
using recreational divers is grossly underreported and widespread.
"Sometimes they get away with it, but several times a year unqualified,
untrained divers lose their lives. How many people have to get killed before
it stops?"
        Did the issue of cost savings enter into the district's decision to
hire unqualified divers? "In order to do a job of this magnitude with any
degree of safety," Beaver explains "it is going to be very expensive. And
the risks to divers may still be too great."
        In hindsight, perhaps the district should have simply dewatered the
tunnel, as they finally did to recover the first two diver's bodies. That
would have been a reasonable decision and one praticed by other irrigation
districts. The canal was empty and not servicing the farmlands this time of
year.
        Future litigation regarding this incident will be closely watched by
those in the diving industry. "The real tragedy in this accident will be if
no one learns from it." Beaver concludes.
From the soap box of Scott Owens.
Regards,
-=Scott=-
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