Safety Violations Cited In Deaths Of 4 Divers Calculations Wrong On Air, For Instance, Newspaper Reports

Some answers are starting to emerge in the tragic deaths of four scuba divers last weekend.

The Yakima Herald-Republic reported Sunday that it appeared basic safety practices for commercial diving weren’t followed as the men dived deep inside an underground irrigation canal near Zillah.

Killed on March 15 were commercial divers Marty Rhode and John Eberle, and volunteer search-and-rescue divers Rusty Hauber and Charlie “J.R.” Mestaz, who went in after them.

Each diver ran out of oxygen. Apparently, incorrect calculations were made about the amount of air required for a cold-water dive into an underground canal that dropped some 100 feet in elevation over a distance of nearly half a mile, the newspaper said.

State and federal workplace codes for commercial diving operations also appear to have been breached, the newspaper said. For instance:

A dive team wasn’t on standby at the scene for the initial dive.

None of the men was tethered to what divers consider a tended safety line.

Just two of the divers had reserve air.

The divers had no way to communicate with people on the surface.

“They may have done this 100 times before, but they were violating safety precautions and it was the law of averages,” said John Ritter, president of Divers Technology Institute, a Seattle-based commercial dive school.

“It’s bound to catch up with you. Unfortunately, someone got killed,” Ritter said.

The state Department of Labor and Industries is investigating.

The tragedy began Saturday morning, March 14, when Rhode, 33, of Zillah, and Eberle, 42, of Grandview, broke through ice at the opening of the 13-foot-tall irrigation tube and plunged into its cold waters. The concrete, underground canal - called a siphon - is used to carry water through uneven terrain.

The divers had been hired by the Roza Irrigation District to locate and remove vehicles that had been driven into the 95-mile canal system over the winter.

Eberle and Rhode planned to reach a depth of 104 feet. The night before, they used a computer program to determine the amount of air they would need.

Eberle had two tanks of air, Rhode just one.

Without communication gear, the divers told irrigation workers at the scene to call 911 if they weren’t back within 45 minutes to an hour.

About an hour after they descended, irrigation workers telephoned for help.

Yakima firefighter Hauber, 34, and Moxee volunteer firefighter Mestaz, 36 - members of the 12-man Yakima County Search and Rescue dive team - were sent to the scene and went underwater.

Two other members of the rescue dive team were in their scuba gear and waiting at the water’s surface.

Mestaz and Hauber clipped onto a steel cable the previous divers had deployed to hook onto vehicles lodged in the siphon. But they didn’t carry another safety line. They also had no means to communicate with topside crews. And only Mestaz had extra air.

Hauber and Mestaz failed to surface after 28 minutes underwater and were retrieved by fellow divers about 200 feet from the surface.

Hauber died at the scene; Mestaz died Tuesday in a Yakima hospital.

State investigators will examine whether each employer did everything it could to ensure its employees’ safety, said Labor and Industries spokesman Bill Ripple.

Dive experts around the nation say the accident could have been avoided if the irrigation district had used commercially trained divers.

“Obviously (the irrigation district) should have hired commercial divers who are set up for that kind of dive,” said Randall S. Cummings, Western Chapter chairman of the Association of Dive Contractors, a non-profit group dedicated to enhancing safety within the commercial diving industry.

The Divers Technology Institute in Seattle trains commercial divers who work underwater on nuclear power plants, bridges, dams and offshore oil operations. Ritter, its president, said recreational divers continually are hired for dangerous commercial work.

Commercial divers have been trained through special commercial dive schools or through the military. No commercial diving certification process exists.

Officials with the Yakima County sheriff’s department and the irrigation district didn’t know the exact levels of training for any of the divers in the March 15 accident.

However, the four all appear to have been trained in recreational diving. One recreational dive group, the Professional Association of Dive Instructors, said it had certified Hauber, Eberle and Rhode at various levels over the years.

Cummings said a commercial dive team would not have entered the irrigation canal siphon with scuba gear. It was too deep, penetration into the tunnel was too long and an easy ascent to the surface wasn’t available, he said. The dive required a hose to connect divers with an oxygen supply on the surface, plus a communications system, he said.