Interview transcript on rescue divers' recovery efforts after bridge collapse

ANDERSON COOPER 360 DEGREES
Bridge Over Mississippi River Collapses (Aired August 1, 2007)
Excerpt from: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIP...01/acd.02.html


COOPER: ...It is a overwhelming disaster scene. The U.S. Coast Guard tells CNN that between 30 and 50 cars are in the water. The city officials have told us as many as 50 cars were in the water.

Pete Gannon joins me now. He trains rescue divers.

Pete, this is now a recovery rather than a rescue. It has made that terrible transition. At this point what are the divers trying to do in these dark waters?

PETE GANNON, PRESIDENT, DIVE RESCUE INTERNATIONAL: Well, the first problem they are going to have is the contamination. There's a severe contamination problem where you've got gas, you've got oil, you got other body fluids in the water, plus the water itself that's contaminated.

These are the problems that the divers are going to face. At night -- they are used to diving in dark water, so they are not -- that's not going to be a big problem for them. However, the sharp metal of the vehicles, the sharp metal of the bridge, all those obstacles that they are going to face under water is going to make it extremely hazardous.

I was watching one picture of somebody trying to balance dive with a rope tied around them which is pretty extremely dangerous. If the rope gets hung up, they are not going to be able to get back to the surface. So the divers who are trained to do this need to be extremely careful and use good judgment. And I'm sure they are.

We have trained several teams from that area, and they are all excellent divers and excellent team members. And I'm sure they are using the best judgment and being as careful as they can to avoid anything sharp that they are going to get injured on.

The last thing we want to do is injure another diver or another victim or have any more accidents out there on the scene.

COOPER: Literally, you were describing the picture we're looking at now. This young woman who is -- has a rope, essentially -- that's all -- tied to her waist and is just taking a breath of air, diving into the water looking into vehicles. You are saying that is extremely dangerous?

GANNON: Yes, it is. It's extremely dangerous to do that type of dive. If that rope gets caught on something underwater, she might not be able to make it back up. She's got a PFD on, which makes it difficult to get down in the first place. But, you know, We need to be careful about that. She's doing the best she can under the circumstances, but you know, that's what the divers are there for, and they've got a lot of them. You know, departments have to make sure that everybody has their standards and follows their standard operating procedures.

COOPER: Absolutely.

GANNON: A lot of mutual aid comes in. You get a lot of mutual aid from other departments and they have to be scrutinized as to what exactly their skills are. Not all teams have all the same skills.

COOPER: And just in terms of difficult jobs, I can't think of something that's got to be a more difficult and unpleasant task to be, you know, diving under the water under in the dark and opening up a car door and, you know, and what -- what one must see as a diver is just, it's hard to believe.

GANNON: Well, you don't really see much at all, even with lights. They don't really help. The biggest problem you have is everything is dark. The metals, you can see the vehicles are all banged up, so the divers have to actually feel their way around the vehicle, determine if it's upside down, right side up. Is the victim inside? Are they in a seat belt? Not in a seat belt? They are dealing with some currents down there, so they have to worry about, you know, debris floating down river.

They've got a lot of different things to worry about. It's not a matter of what you can see, the public safety divers, they're doing it all by feel. They're actually using their hands to actually feel around and they have to be able to feel for that body. That's what public safety divers do. That's what they train for and that's what they do.

COOPER: In your experience, how long can somebody survive in a car that has been submerged? Do -- is there a window of time?

GANNON: Well, there's that myth that we see a lot in the movies about the air pockets. And in reality, there is no air pocket. It's extremely rare, and that's if the car is not submerged all the way under water. But if the car is submerged under water, there is really not going to be an air pocket in the car. So that kind of myth is gone.

You do have cold water up there. And anything less than 70 degrees, you have up to a one-hour window. And they are trying to extend that to make it 90 minutes to revive somebody that's been under water for 60 to 90 minutes, to resuscitate them without any brain damage, and that's the new goal and the new medical ethics are going that way.

COOPER: And when the -- the number that we are hearing is there are at least some 50 vehicles in this -- in the water. They're fully submerged or partially submerged. How long does it take to actually search, to thoroughly search a vehicle under water?

GANNON: It can take about 15 minutes to search the vehicle. But then you need to search around the vehicle. You know, if the victim was injured and they got out or the victim got out of their car and could not swim, you know, if they can't swim, they can't get to the surface, and they will end up drowning next to their car. So we have to do the cursory search around the vehicle.

COOPER: Is that common that people get out of the vehicle, but then expire in the water?

GANNON: Yes. About 50 percent of the time they may be able to get out of the vehicle, but their injuries preclude them from swimming or getting to safety. And it could be -- in this particular incidence, it looks like there's a straight sea wall, so if they did get out, they'd have to swim somewhere to be able to get out of the water.

So, you know, and maybe bystanders could help, you know, having a throw line that could help just to hold them until the fire department or the police department or sheriff's department arrives on scene.

COOPER: Well, Pete, I appreciate your expertise. You trained a lot of divers, and our hearts go out to all the rescue personnel who are on the scene trying to do the best they can in very difficult circumstances.

It is dark now. There is limited lighting on the scene and there is a lot of debris in the water, a lot of jagged concrete and twisted metal. Very dangerous for divers in the water right now. Pete, explaining some of that.

Appreciate that, Pete.

Thanks for the update. I was wondering what type of conditions these divers were facing. Sounds like a real bad job, even for a diving job.

The news said St. Louis County offered its ROVs (equipped with sonar and GPS, extending visibility up to 150 ft.) so that, ideally, divers don’t have to be in the water (polluted with chemical hazards and debris) until videos, photos and sonar scans are sent up to create a “map” for actual retrieval.

Sure, now that is the case. We do have to remember before the ROV's were even thought about divers were in that water looking for anyone that may have been alive. Now that there is no chance of any survivors, of course the smart thing to do is send in some ROV's and leave the divers to relax.

We really need to think about the conditions the divers were in, they are brave men and women with a lot of skill.

agree, and the "science of underwater recovery" kind of articles do acknowledge just that -- in the end, it's human talent that comes into critical play :)

Rov's are not practical in this application. No visibility, entanglement hazards, strong ivercurrent, etc.

This disaster scene is only for trained divers who are familiar with the environment. I worked as a Commercial Diver on this river many years ago. Our main job was inspecting tug boats that hauled barges from the south. A lot of times we would be hired to find stuff dropped in the river.

In the years that I have been diving, the only experience I ever had where I wanted to quit, was a river job that required me to search for a 4 foot cast iron pipe the Highway Dept dropped into the river during the Spring. Strong current no visibility, gettong smacked by floating garbage that you could not identify. Spent a couple of hours digging through stuck treed, barbed wire etc on the bridge piling. Finally found the lost pipe. I did not want another job like that. I decided the warm Ocean and 100' visibilty or the cold 50' visibilty and the best shipwrecks in the world was a better job location for me:)

Jim

Actually the ROV's are perfect in this situation. They had a news story on TV about how they took out the divers and replaced them with ROV's. They said the ROV's sensors could see with other methods that humans can not. They were not the traditional ROV's you would think of, not like "The Blues Brothers" used to check out the Titanic.


And how could one be familiar with the environment? I mean it is not every day a diver gets to dive into a collapsed bridge wreckage! So how familiar could they really be?

What would be the difference between this bridge and the past bridges that have fallen into a body of water? How about a torpedoed US Navy ship in some 3rd world country in a 13 foot tidal change in zero visibilty water? Scenarios?? May sound out of this world, but Navy and Commercial divers are trained to dive in theses conditions.

This is not the first bridge that has collapsed into the water. They lost a bridge in the Keys a couple of years ago, one in the Tampa area too. So this is not the first time divers have had to dive in these conditions. That is the reason they are using Navy divers, because they are trained to do this kind of stuff.

For the ROV, the technology has probably changed and my ignorance of new techonlogy shows. In the end they are still going to need divers in the water to attach cables that they are going to use to lift all the debris.




Jim