Cause A Mystery In Canal Diving Accident Rescue Crews Hope To Recover 2 Bodies Still In Siphon

Divers may attempt today to recover the bodies of two divers who presumably drowned in the murk of an underground irrigation canal.

The vast subterranean canal claimed the lives of three divers total on Saturday, and left one in a coma on life support in a Yakima hospital.

Divers from the Tri-Cities will decide if they want to risk going after the bodies of two irrigation district workers who are believed dead, said Yakima County Undersheriff Lane Roberts.

Investigators said no cause has been established for the diving disaster.

“We may never know what happened down there,” said Adrian Jacobs, chief of the Moxee Fire Department, told the Yakima Herald-Republic on Sunday.

Charlie Mestaz, 37, one of two rescue divers pulled from an underground portion of the canal Saturday, was in critical condition in a Yakima hospital Sunday. He is a volunteer firefighter from Moxee.

Meanwhile, an autopsy confirmed drowning as the cause of death of Rusty Hauber, 34, a Yakima firefighter who was Mestaz’ diving partner, Yakima County Coroner Leonard Birkinbine said.

The incident began when two professional divers went into the dark, subterranean canal Saturday morning to retrieve submerged vehicles, and failed to surface.

The two volunteer search and rescue divers went after them, and also ran into trouble and had to be pulled from the water. Their air tanks were empty.

The bodies of the two original divers - Marty Rhode and John Eberle - are still missing in the underground canal. Officials say there is no chance they are alive.

Sheriff Doug Blair has said Hauber and Mestaz should have had enough air for the time they were underwater, but when rescuers found them their tanks were empty.

Among the questions investigators are trying to answer is why the divers would consume so much air in so short a period of time, Blair has said.

The underground section - known as a siphon - is being drained, but still has some water in it, he said.

A team from the Kennewick Fire Department will likely rappel into the tunnel to make sure it is free of methane gas before divers go in, Roberts said.

The canal section is about 20 miles south of Yakima, in an arid region of south-central Washington that was turned into farmland by huge federal irrigation projects.

Hauber will likely be buried on Thursday, Yakima Fire Chief Al Chronister said. He had a wife and two children and had been with the Yakima Fire Department for three years. He had been a volunteer search and rescue diver for a decade.

Mestaz, a Moxee mechanic, has a wife and daughter.