The Navy is charging two high ranking enlisted men ( chief warrant officer, and senior chief petty officer) for the diving accident in Feb. This is an elite diving team that worked on the Minn bridge collapse in 2007.
Hard to imagine what went wrong. These are the best of the best in diving. A potential 150 ft dive is no joke. They got all kinds of safety procedures.
Original article from Feb.http://www.wavy.com/dpp/military/two-navy-divers-die-in-maryland
Potter said MDSU-2 is the salvage diving component of EOD Group 2. He said they respond to salvage operations on the east coast and overseas.
The Baltimore Sun reports the deaths happened in a testing facility called the “Super Pond.” A Harford County emergency responder told the Sun the divers went into cardiac arrest.
They were using air hoses and tethered to each other.
Charges filed.
The Virginian-Pilot: Your source for Virginia breaking news, sports, business, entertainment, weather and traffic
Reyher and Harris were diving at a testing facility at Aberdeen Proving Ground. The spot is known as the Super Pond - a 1,070-foot-long, 150-foot-deep pond on the banks of the Bush River that’s used to shock-test ships and submarines.
Although details are sparse, former Navy divers say it’s obvious that something went very wrong.
Emergency workers called to the pond found one of the divers dead; the other was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Rob Rice, a former Navy diver and owner of Dockside Diving in Virginia Beach, said it’s hard to imagine a scenario that would claim the lives of two Navy divers.
Rice said precautions are in place to prevent accidents, including checks and double-checks of air flow, air and gas mixtures, and communications systems.
The protocol is to pull divers up immediately if communications fail, and backup divers should be on the scene in case of trouble.
“It is definitely a team operation,” Rice said, declining to speculate about what might have gone wrong in this case.
“It’s not like one person says, ‘Hey, I want you two to get in the water.’ There’s a group process and series of safety measures in place to prevent this sort of thing from happening.”