Mistakes Doomed Divers -- Some Experts Blame Deaths On Bent Rules

YAKIMA - Basic safety practices apparently weren't followed by the four professional divers who died after they dived deep inside an underground irrigation canal, The Yakima Herald-Republic reported yesterday.

Killed were irrigation-district divers Marty Rhode and John Eberle, and volunteer search-and-rescue divers Rusty Hauber and Charlie "J.R." Mestaz, who went in after them March 15 in the canal near Zillah.

Each diver ran out of air. Apparently, incorrect calculations were made about the amount of air required for a cold-water dive into an underground canal that dropped some 100 feet in elevation over a distance of nearly half a mile, the story by reporter Jeremy Meyer said.

State and federal workplace codes for commercial diving operations also appear to have been breached, the newspaper said. For instance:

-- A dive team wasn't on standby at the scene for the initial dive.

-- None of the men was tethered to what divers consider a tended safety line.

-- Just two of the divers had a reserve air supply.

-- The divers had no way to communicate with people on the surface.

"They may have done this 100 times before, but they were violating safety precautions, and it was the law of averages," said John Ritter, president of Divers Technology Institute, a Seattle-based commercial dive school.

"It's bound to catch up with you. Unfortunately, someone got killed," Ritter said.

The rate of air use changes with the depth of the dive, Ritter said. The deeper you go, the faster you use air.

Near the surface, the typical diver with 80 cubic feet of air in his or her tanks has about 80 minutes worth of breathing time at a relaxed rate. But for every 33 feet a diver descends, that time is cut in half, he said.

Cold water can make a diver consume air more quickly because he is breathing faster.

The state Department of Labor and Industries is investigating the deaths.

The tragedy began when Rhode, 33, of Zillah, and Eberle, 42, of Grandview, broke through ice at the opening of the 13-foot-tall irrigation tube and plunged into its cold waters. The concrete, underground canal - called a siphon - is used to carry water through uneven terrain. The irrigation system was not operating when the divers entered the siphon.

The divers had been hired by the Roza Irrigation District to find and remove vehicles that had been driven into the 95-mile canal system over the winter.

Eberle and Rhode planned to reach a depth of 104 feet. The night before, they used a computer program to determine the amount of air they would need.

Eberle had two tanks of air, Rhode just one.

Without communication gear, the divers told irrigation workers at the scene to call 911 if they weren't back within 45 minutes to an hour.

About an hour after they descended, irrigation workers telephoned for help.

Yakima firefighter Hauber, 34, and Moxee volunteer firefighter Mestaz, 36 - members of the 12-man Yakima County Search and Rescue dive team - were sent to the scene and went underwater.

Two other members of the rescue-dive team were in their scuba gear and waiting at the water's surface.

Mestaz and Hauber clipped onto a steel cable the previous divers had deployed to hook onto vehicles lodged in the siphon. But they didn't carry another safety line. They also had no means to communicate with topside crews. And only Mestaz had extra air.

When, after 28 minutes, Hauber and Mestaz failed to surface, another team of divers went in and retrieved them 200 feet in from the entrance.

Hauber died at the scene. The bodies of Rhode and Eberle were found the next day. Mestaz died Tuesday in a Yakima hospital.

State investigators will examine whether each employer did everything it could to ensure the safety of its employees, said Labor and Industries spokesman Bill Ripple.

Sheriff Doug Blair said, "I have neither the expertise or the desire to second-guess what went wrong. That's why we're doing the investigations. We want to come up with something concrete."

Regardless of the conclusions, Ron Van Gundy, manager of the irrigation district, said the practice of clearing the siphon will likely change.

"We're going to come up with a different way of doing things in the future," Van Gundy said.

Dive experts around the nation say the accident could have been avoided if the irrigation district had used commercially trained divers.

"Obviously (the irrigation district) should have hired commercial divers who are set up for that kind of dive," said Randall Cummings, western chapter chairman of the Association of Dive Contractors, a nonprofit group dedicated to enhancing safety within the commercial-diving industry.

The Divers Technology Institute in Seattle trains commercial divers who work underwater on nuclear-power plants, bridges, dams and offshore oil operations.

Commercial divers have been trained through special commercial dive schools or through the military. No commercial diving certification process exists, but industry officials say one will be in place by this summer.

Officials with the Yakima County Sheriff's Department and the irrigation district didn't know the exact levels of training for any of the divers in the March 15 accident.

However, the four all appear to have been trained in recreational diving. One recreational dive group, the Professional Association of Dive Instructors, said it had certified Hauber, Eberle and Rhode at various levels over the years.

Recreational diving is taught mainly through scuba shops. Once students pass the courses and successfully complete a set number of dives, they receive certification, allowing them to fill their tanks with air and buy equipment.

Cummings said a commercial dive team would not have entered the irrigation canal siphon with scuba gear. It was too deep, penetration into the tunnel was too long and an easy ascent to the surface wasn't available.

That dive required a hose to connect divers with an air supply on the surface, plus a communications system, he said.

Obvious miscalculations were made in the amount of air needed, he added.