Man drowns in siphon tube

Emergency workers and volunteers labored for 9 1/2 hours under harrowing conditions to remove the body of a workman who drowned Tuesday at the bottom of a narrow, 50-foot-tall irrigation tube in an Okanogan County reservoir.

“It’s just horrible down there,” Sheriff Frank Rogers said of the siphon tube in which 49-year-old Okanogan, Wash., resident Lester L. Woda was trapped underwater.

The concrete tube draws irrigation water from Leader Lake, about nine miles west of Okanogan. Woda was a manager for the Johnny Appleseed orchard company.

Rogers said Woda was using a scuba-diving tank when his right leg got trapped up to the knee in a discharge pipe. Woda was believed to have run out of air by the time rescue workers arrived.

Woda had two helpers on the surface, but they were unable to pull him free when he tugged on his safety rope to indicate he was in trouble. Woda was trapped when water pressure apparently caused a swinging “butterfly” valve to close on Woda’s foot, Rogers said.

He said Woda had drained the tube to work on a valve at the bottom, but water leaking in from the top of the tube caused Woda to abandon that approach.

“It’s like trying to stand in the middle of waterfall and work,” Rogers said.

So Woda refilled the tube and descended through 42 feet of water with a scuba tank held above his head. There wasn’t room to strap the tank onto his back because the funnel-shaped tube, although 5 feet across at the top, is only 30 to 36 inches in diameter at the bottom, Rogers said.

“The wall is actually against your back and the front wall is touching your forehead,” Rogers said. “That’s how tight it is in there.”

Rogers said about 50 volunteers and emergency workers from the Okanogan and Chelan county sheriff’s offices, Lifeline Ambulance, the Okanogan Fire Department and Okanogan County Search and Rescue drained the siphon tube and worked for four hours just to get Woda’s body into an upright position so it could be removed.

“We were rotating two guys, going down one at a time, because they would just get exhausted,” Rogers said.

All the work was performed under the “waterfall” conditions that caused Woda to re-fill the tube.

The work also was hampered by limited light from headlamps and poorly positioned lanterns, the sheriff said.

About eight descents were required before Woda’s body was removed at about 9:30 p.m.

“I was proud of these guys, all of them,” Rogers said of the emergency workers.

The state Department of Labor and Industries will be asked to investigate the accident, but the sheriff said Woda was experienced in siphon-tube work.

“He had been doing this for years,” Rogers said.