Divers responded swiftly to Seafair accident

Nobody wanted to leave the body of David Browning - who drowned Friday afternoon while celebrating the start of Seafair's hydroplane races - in the deep water of Lake Washington.

Not his family, not the police rescue divers and not Seafair organizers whose hydroplane qualifying heats were to continue the next day.

But the 37-year-old Kent man lay in water too deep for ordinary recovery measures and, in desperation, police called the Divers Institute of Technology.

A team of divers worked through the night and into the next morning to find and bring up the body.

Browning, a lighting salesman who left behind a wife, a 5-year-old daughter and a 2-year-old son, was known for his sense of humor and his big smile. He had been celebrating the hydroplane races when he drowned.

On Friday, he and his brother-in-law were with friends on a house boat. He climbed onto an ice chest that appeared anchored to the boat's deck to dive, but as he pushed off, it moved, and he slammed his head on the log boom on his way down.

Witnesses who saw the accident jumped into the water but were unable to find him.

Browning's body, below 160 feet of water, was too deep for the Seattle Police Department's rescue and recovery divers.

"We can't can't go below 100 feet," said Lt. Dick Schweitzer of the police's Harbor Patrol. "It's too dangerous. But we needed to recover the body, and the divers at the institute are some of the only ones that could have done it."

Schweitzer said that the hydroplane races, one of Seafair's biggest events, would have been canceled or at least delayed had the divers failed to recover Browning's body.

The institute - which is one of only five in the nation to train professional industrial divers - called in a team immediately after the request for help.

Armed with umbilical breathing cords that allow them to dive to a depth of 300 feet and a decompression chamber, divers made more than five attempts to locate and recover the body, said the institute's director, John Paul Johnston.

The institute is donating the cost of the recovery, estimated to be about $20,000, as a gift to the city and as a gesture to honor Browning.

"We did it for the family," said Johnston. "It would have been a terrible thing for them if the body had been left down there."

A memorial service for Browning will be held at 1 p.m. Friday at the United Methodist Church, 11010 S.E. 248th St., in Kent.

Christine Clarridge's phone message number is 206-464-8983. Her e-mail address is cclarridge@seattletimes.com.