Interview transcript on rescue divers' recovery efforts after bridge collapse

[PinayDiver]

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.

[acelockco]

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.

[PinayDiver]

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

[eelpout]

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

[acelockco]

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?

[eelpout]

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