Rescue / Recovery has got to be the scariest of all diving.
I participated only once in such an endeavour, and it was downright claustrophobic and spooky. Never again !
We were trying to recover a big (20 ton) bulldozer that had slid off its barge in a windstorm on the Abitibi River upstream from the power dam at Island Falls.
Two operators were on the barge. One was in hospital with crushed legs and not available, and the other told us approximately where it went down. You would think a bulldozer of that size would not be hard to find, eh?
But the water upstream from a big power dam is full of drowned forest, lying all directions just above the bottom. The bulldozer was big enough to have pushed them all aside before it sank in the bottom silt and let them fall back over it. The water was murky. About 10 feet down into a 60 foot dive there was zero visibility. We did a grid search pattern, going down every five feet.
We had to follow the line to the bottom, grope around in the muck for anything hard and metallic and then come up and repeat. The trees were floating anywhere from the bottom to ten feet up, and they tangled in our gear constantly. It was horrible to feel yourself being poked or tangled by invisible branches and stay focused on the job at hand.
After three days, we called off the search. Go figure - the uninjured guy was right out to lunch in his estimation of the location of the accident. When the other guy finally got out of the hospital he was able to pinpoint the location (about a mile from where we searched) immediately and the bulldozer was recovered.
That incident gave me a healthy respect for anyone who does search and recovery for a living.
Edit: where is my memory going? Island Falls, not Abitibi Canyon!
I participated only once in such an endeavour, and it was downright claustrophobic and spooky. Never again !
We were trying to recover a big (20 ton) bulldozer that had slid off its barge in a windstorm on the Abitibi River upstream from the power dam at Island Falls.
Two operators were on the barge. One was in hospital with crushed legs and not available, and the other told us approximately where it went down. You would think a bulldozer of that size would not be hard to find, eh?
But the water upstream from a big power dam is full of drowned forest, lying all directions just above the bottom. The bulldozer was big enough to have pushed them all aside before it sank in the bottom silt and let them fall back over it. The water was murky. About 10 feet down into a 60 foot dive there was zero visibility. We did a grid search pattern, going down every five feet.
We had to follow the line to the bottom, grope around in the muck for anything hard and metallic and then come up and repeat. The trees were floating anywhere from the bottom to ten feet up, and they tangled in our gear constantly. It was horrible to feel yourself being poked or tangled by invisible branches and stay focused on the job at hand.
After three days, we called off the search. Go figure - the uninjured guy was right out to lunch in his estimation of the location of the accident. When the other guy finally got out of the hospital he was able to pinpoint the location (about a mile from where we searched) immediately and the bulldozer was recovered.
That incident gave me a healthy respect for anyone who does search and recovery for a living.
Edit: where is my memory going? Island Falls, not Abitibi Canyon!
And you may call it righteousness
When civility survives,
But I've had dinner with the Devil and
I know nice from right.
From Dinner with the Devil, by Big Rude Jake
When civility survives,
But I've had dinner with the Devil and
I know nice from right.
From Dinner with the Devil, by Big Rude Jake