Bodies Of Two Divers Recovered From Irrigation Canal Authorities Mystified By Accident That Killed Three In Water Tunnel

The bodies of two divers who drowned in a murky underground irrigation canal that also claimed the life of a rescuer were recovered late Monday, authorities said.

The bodies of Marty Rhode, 33, and John Eberle, 41, were taken to the Yakima County morgue where autopsies were planned for later in the week, a sheriff’s department dispatcher said.

The bodies were located earlier in the day, but Yakima County Undersheriff Lane Roberts said investigators needed to photograph the underwater scene before they were removed from the vast subterranean canal.

Authorities still don’t know the circumstances that led to the deaths of Rhode and Eberle. The two divers who tried to rescue them also ran into trouble; Rusty Hauber, 32, died and Charlie Mestaz remained in a coma Monday in a Yakima hospital.

“There’s lots and lots of theories but we have absolutely no facts to deal with,” Roberts said. “Most of the theories floating about are things that inexperienced divers would have trouble with. But these divers were all experienced.”

The incident began when Rhode and Eberle, both professionals, went into the tunnel-like canal Saturday morning to attach cables to submerged vehicles so they could be pulled from the canal before the start of irrigation season. They 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 by two other volunteer divers. Their air tanks were empty.

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.

The divers were operating in an under-ground, tubular section of the canal which drops about 100 feet over a distance of some 2,500 feet, Roberts said.

The tube was built to prevent the water from cascading.

Divers must swim in the dark amid strong water pressure. The tube is 13 feet tall, but plunges to a depth of 100 feet below the ground, Roberts said.

“It’s not like you can just drop your weight belt and go up to the surface like in a normal dive,” Roberts said. “You have to go one direction or the other, and you have to be able to go for a considerable distance if you run into trouble.”

Ironically, he said, water pressure had pushed the vehicles the original divers were looking for almost to the opposite end of the tunnel.

“If only they’d started at the other end, this whole tragedy probably would have been averted,” Roberts said.