OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14507750
DIVING,DROWN,DIVER,WATER
Event description
Employee drowns while scuba diving
Investigation abstract
At approximately 1:55 p.m. on November 28,1989, Employee #1 was scuba diving wit then re-entered the water. At the surface, Employee #1 mentioned to the buddy d iver that it was hard to hold on in the current. The buddy diver called for the chase boat. The chase boat came up to Employee #1 and asked if he was OK . Emplo yee #1 said he needed help getting out of the water. The chase boat got assistan ce but, as it was returning to him, Employee #1 let go of the cable and sank to the bottom (about 30 feet). Rescue divers located him about 90 minutes later. Af ter four hours of life saving attempts, he was pronounced dead at 8:00 p.m. h a buddy diver to locate anchors that hold the ice booms in the St. Mary's Rive r. Employee #1 and the buddy diver were using a crane barge and holding onto the crane cable, while at the surface and to guide themselves up and down. The wate r temperature was about 40 degrees and the current was approximately 2 knots. Bo th divers were wearing unisuits (dry suits). They had made three short dives bef ore lunch. After an hour and a half, they re-entered the water. They could not l ocate the anchor on the first dive. Employee #1 exited the water by ladder to th e barge. He walked across the barge, spoke briefly with the dive supervisor, and
Victim
-
#1 Fatality Age 33 M
- Nature of injury
- 22
- Part of body
- 31
- Event type
- 14
- Source
- 41
- Occupation code
- 834
- Human factor
- 14
- Environmental factor
- 18
- Task assigned
- 2
Codes shown verbatim from OSHA's accident-investigation database. A human-readable decoder is coming in a future release once the accident_lookup2 dictionary is loaded.