Rescue Diver Remembered In Yakima Memorial Service

Fri., March 21, 1997

From Staff And Wire Reports

Hundreds of people gathered Thursday to remember a diver who died trying to rescue two other divers who had drowned while attempting to remove submerged vehicles from a murky irrigation canal.

Yakima firefighters donned their dark blue dress uniforms to pay tribute to Rusty Hauber, the first city firefighter to die in the line of duty in the department’s 110-year-history.

Local dignitaries addressed the memorial service audience at the Yakima SunDome.

Hauber, 34, and another search and rescue diver, Charlie Mestaz, dove into the underground Roza Canal siphon near Zillah on Saturday to search for two irrigation divers who had failed to surface. Authorities said Hauber was dead when backup divers pulled him from the water.

“We’re like a big family and losing Rusty was like losing a member of that family,” Yakima Fire Department spokesman Tony Sloan said Wednesday. “We’ve never had to deal with something so traumatic, something quite like this before.”

A memorial service for Mestaz, 37, was set for Saturday at a local high school. Mestaz, a volunteer Moxee firefighter, died Tuesday at a Yakima hospital. He was pulled from the siphon with Hauber, but never regained consciousness.

Authorities still don’t know the circumstances that led to the deaths of the two irrigation divers, John Eberle, 41, of Grandview, and Marty Rhode, 33, of Zillah. Eberle was buried Thursday and Rhode was to be buried today.

The tragedy began when Rhode and Eberle, both professionals, went into the tunnel-like canal to attach cables to submerged vehicles so they could be pulled from the canal before the start of irrigation season. They failed to surface.

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