A terrible decision ... (in my opinion)

[BladesRobinson]

I don't normally "second guess" anyone's decision when it comes to making a "dive/no-dive" decision but this guy has made a huge error in judgement! (my opinion)

I even think we might need to coin a new term ... Public Reckless Diver.

I post this for the benefit of anyone else who might not know better (GaryD, Bridge, Bob3 and others, PLEASE add your thoughts too) ... this is NOT Public Safety Diving, it is CLEARLY a Commercial Dive Operation. The diver obviously has NO training or knowledge regarding this kind of operation. If he did, he would be wearing a helmet secured to a suit, surface supplied air, a stand by diver, etc. I can only shake my head in disbeleif. Obviously this wasn't covered in his open water or rescue diver courses.

There is ABSOLUTELY ZERO O.S.H.A. COMPLIANCE and the City of Grand Island, NE should be glad they aren't paying funeral expenses plus HUGE $$$s to the widow. I wonder about hepatitis and a host of other medical issues that might show up in the future since there was no "base line" medical and I would bet, no subsequent follow-up.

I enlarged the photo and it's an AGA mask! It does not appear to be a vulcanized rubber dry suit, a standard BC (at least it's a SeaQuest! ... good brand).

=========================================​

Nebraska Diver Plunges Into Poop To Save City Sewer System
By Robert Price
KHAS/NBC News Channel

GRAND ISLAND, NE -- In late November, the city of Grand Island, Nebraska declared a sewer emergency after a sewage feeder line malfunctioned at the city's wastewater treatment plant. The problem was corrected after Grand Island diver Dave Lemburg volunteered to dive into the waste and fix a broken valve.

After 20 minutes submerged in the waste, Lemburg fixed the problem. Today Lemburg looks through a stack of thank you letters. For the past week, he's been receiving 5 or 6 day. Most are addressed to "the Grand Island hero", almost all are from strangers.

"I haven't had a chance to sit down and count today's but probably another 5 or 6, so close to 30 cards," said Lemburg.

Some send money, others try humor -- all show gratitude. Dave Lemburg is making quite the name for himself, but he remains humble.

"I did this out of the kindness of my heart, not to win any awards I'm just another grand islander like everyone else," Lemburg said. "It was the nastiest stuff you'll ever encounter, but if I'd kept calling it that I'd never have gone down to do the job."

Dave's a volunteer with the city's dive and rescue team. He didn't have to do this -- a fact his wife quickly reminded him.

"She kind of gave me that look and she said, "you're not going," and I said, "I'm going. Good bye", said Lemberg.

The sewage current was strong, so Dave strapped 40 pounds of lead onto his scuba gear and was lowered down on a rope.

"Luckily the rope was just at the right length, the valve right in front of me," he said.

Now about three feet below the surface, Dave found the valve by feel. He would spend the next 15 minutes trying to close the valve with a wrench. Slowly the sewage began to go down.

"You have to mentally block all of the nasty stuff out and look at the situation at hand. I thought of all those people's basements and Christmas coming up, and I thought "this would not be good," said Lemburg.

Dave says even diving for bodies does not compare to this mission.

=============================
The video can be seen at:
First Coast News - News on Demand Video -

The article can be viewed at:
Strange & Unusual - Nebraska Diver Plunges Into Poop To Save City Sewer System
(from there, there are links to the video also)

Another video can be seen at:
NTV Video Player

=============================

ADDITIONAL...

G.I. 'Poop Diver' Receives 250 Thank You Cards

Posted: Dec 16, 2007 11:24 PM EST
Updated: Dec 16, 2007 11:36 PM EST

"Just the fact of what you were diving into," David Lemburg said.
He volunteered to drop down into Grand Island's darkest waters. He shows his
'sewer suit'...it's still hanging up to dry.
But people are wondering...where did he find the courage to submerge his entire
body into what you flush down the toilet.

"Pray to God as my guide, and follow down in the water and take care of me." he said.

He calls it a leap...or plunge of faith. His other job, is a lay minister.
His mission to save thousands of basements and businesses in Grand Island has many
people sending thanks.
"Thank you for helping in our city problem," he read off a recent card.

The card is one of 17 that arrived Saturday. But that's his smallest load.
"Forty Thursday, no 53, 40," he said going through each day of the week. "There's close to 250."
Two-hundred and fifty cards. Including a cartoon picture...of Lemburg himself. He said many are also Christmas cards.

"They said thanks...with Christmas right around the corner, it would have been a mess."
Grand Island Public Works is taking steps to prevent another sewage shut-down...but would he answer another call should it happen again? Lemburg said he can't say right now, but that would be a big task. <--- Let's ALL hope he says "No!"

 

[ReefGuy]

All I can say is 'Wow'.

 

[Ana]

These are the type of events that greatly contributes to spread all that is wrong about inland commercial diving.
Public Safety/Rescue Divers from police or fire departments as a general rule get the training and the equipment they need for most of the situations they encounter.
Offshore divers are for the majority trained by commercial diving schools plus they go thru a "paying dues" type of apprenticeship.

It is the inland diving that gets every possible corner cut to extremes. Seems like 99% of contracts manages to ignore diving needs when it comes to budgets. Of course this translates into the typical: "so and so's uncle is a diver and I think Jo has dive gear from when his nephew took a rec class".
OSHA? sure they have rules, but you would be surprise of how many people think that OSHA is a town in Wisconsin. OSHA only shows up when there is an accident, and not a small event either.

Having this yahoo perform this dive and even worse get "thank you cards" is a kick in the gut of every small commercial diving company trying to do things right. What can you expect when even government agencies looks for loop holes to ignore some of the basic OSHA rules.

 

[bridgediver]

Geez... What a total knob. Where would you start with this guy? He's suppoosed to be a PSD???

That would be the day I'd even entain the idea of risking even a fingernail clipping of my guys into such foolishness. Still, this guy apparently had God on his side so with him as a tender I guess you could do anything...


We see stuff like this around Christmas time every year. People doing dumb things that they shouldn't because they want to help/give when they normally wouldn't. The media then climbs on board and starts a frenzy of "what a great guy" "the true spirit of Christmas" blah blah blah
- don't get me wrong. I LOVE Christmas time (except when I have to work, like this year )

I think Santa should bring Dave Lemburg a lump of s*it this year

 

[BladesRobinson]

I found this article in today's Grand Island Independant and see that the city is considering spending $8,000 to replace the diver's equipment.

If they had hired a professional dive contractor with the proper equipment, I wonder how much money they could have saved.

I am NOT a commercial diver but as a public safety diver, I know my limits and I have pretty good knowledge on what it taught in a public safety diving course.

Just because a program teaches a diver how to respond to an incident doesn't mean that a diver has to DIVE at every incident. While a well trained public safety diver can resolve many incidents underwater, that doesn't mean they have to resolve ALL of them. There are times when a respectable commercial diving contractor should be hired and this is one of thise times.

When a dive is not perforemd under the guise of "public safety" and it is not "recreational" then other standards (OSHA) apply. It doesn't matter if this diver "volunteered" or not. He was WORKING underwater on behalf of a company (in this case, the city) and the amount of compensation is NOT considered.


Sewer bills coming in; concrete corrosion a concern

By Tracy Overstreet
tracy.overstreet@theindependent.com

The big bill for November's emergency repair to the Grand Island sewer system was paid by the city council Tuesday night.
It cost $55,000.
But there are two more bills expected to come in from the emergency repair and more expense that may come next year as the city searches for more corrosion in sewer lines.
Grand Island Public Works Director Steve Riehle said he's waiting for emergency repair bills from Nunnenkamp Well Company and diver Dave Lemburg.
Riehle expects the Nunnenkamp bill to be about $10,000 for pumps it provided Nov. 29 when a pump station valve failed at the wastewater treatment plant. He believed Lemburg's diving equipment will cost about $8,000 to replace. Lemburg helped close the failed valve by diving into raw sewage which "gets in the pores of the material" on the diving suit, Riehle said.
"You have to throw it away," he said.
But more cost may be just around the corner to abate the very situation that led to the November sewer emergency.
Riehle said a concrete drainage pipe original to the 1964 wastewater treatment plant corroded from hydrogen sulfide in the sewer line. Hydrogen sulfide is a common gas given off from sewage.
The problem is there's a lot more concrete pipe at the wastewater treatment plant and in the city's sewer collection system all of which is subject to corrosion.
"We're TVing the lines now," Riehle said.
"TVing" is using a televised scope inserted in the sewer lines to check for any holes or corrosion. The TVing started in September.
Riehle said the city has already experienced a major failure in a sewer collector line, a sewer interceptor that joins collectors and now at a drainage line at the wastewater treatment plant.
The failures were all related to decades old concrete corroding.
Newer concrete can be treated to be "sulfate resistant" or clay or plastic pipes can be used instead, Riehle said.
The failure of the sewer collector line happened at South Locust Street and Oklahoma earlier this year and caused a sinkhole in South Locust there. The sewer line alone cost about $20,000 to fix, Riehle said.
The interceptor line at Plum and Sutherland cost over $100,000 to fix in 2004 and 2005, he said. The corroded drainage pipe at the wastewater treatment plant cost about $45,000 to repair with a plastic lining being installed.
That repair was underway in November when the valve emergency occurred. Riehle said the valve failed because the corroded drainage line had let sand leach into the pipes, which then plugged the valve and caused it to fail.
It's a concrete issue that public works crews are evaluating to see how much needs repaired or replaced.
The city has about 230 miles of sanitary sewer lines in the collection system, about six miles of which are concrete, Riehle said.
"I'm concerned about the financial impact," he said. "When you find out how good or bad the system is, then you have to come up with solutions."
Most of the sewer lines should be evaluated in early 2008 and a plan then prepared to take to the council in May or June, he said. Any repairs will be paid for by sewer ratepayers.
"I'm hopeful the plan will have a small impact on the budget but truly it's too early to tell," Riehle said.
In other action Tuesday night, the city council:
* Accepted the final completion of the 25,000-square feet library addition.
* Amend the zoning regulations at the Platte Valley Industrial Park to allow propane storage tanks in the manufacturing estates zone.
* Made one change to council committee appointments Councilwoman Peg Gilbert was appointed to the Community Redevelopment Authority instead of Councilman Bob Niemann. Niemann will serve as the liaison to the Humane Society instead of Gilbert.
* Award a $31,200 contract to Ray Aguilar Janitorial for housekeeping at the Law Enforcement Center.

 

[Gary D.]

Several issues should have stopped this dive.

First having no relationship to saving or recovering a human it should have gone commercial. Not having anything to do with “Critical” evidence it should have gone commercial.

Knowing just what was reported is enough to stop this dive. It should have been surface supplied as a starter. I have done two dives in Digesters and one in a Navy Crude ship tank to recover people. We didn’t have a lot of fancy gear back then and I did it in the old one piece, no zipper dry and a Jack Brown rig. Even today we have Vikings set aside for use in heavy contaminated situations.

Even if it was in a position where you needed SCUBA I don’t think a BC should have been used. You need to be as slick as possible.

Current, if the system was plugged why was there current? That needed to be shut down. We have lost way too many PSD’s around current and obstructions similar to this one.

Just enough rope? What kind of rope and why was there just enough? Sounds like they didn’t plan for the distance to be covered, another reason it should have gone commercial.

NO other divers? So now what happens when the dive literally goes to crap?

This whole thing is full of fubars and it was just to prevent a bunch of crappers from backing up. Knowing some of the environmental factors, such as the current, even if it were a human involved in a “Rescue” situation it would still be a more than likely no go until it was stopped or slowed.

The guy had good intentions and all turned out well. But many a diver has been lost to good intentions that didn’t turn out so well.

This was in every aspect a commercial operation the city should have contracted out to company ready to handle this.

The clean up items? An air freshioner?

Gary D.

 

[tc]

Nice guy, Dumb decision.

 

[muddiver]

This was almost as good as the article on the poor schmo in Mexico City that dives the city sanitary sewer to remove bodies and other obstructions on a regular basis. At least he is diving a viking dry suit with a Superlite hiving helmet.

Regardless of what money was lost by the nearest commercial diver, this guy had no business making a dive like that. This would make a great training topic at the next major PSD conference.

 

[james croft]

May be dumb to make the dive, but at least he is smart enough to come up with an $8,000 price for his gear.

 

[Scared Silly]

Just had a nice little chat with OSHA and Nebraska State Workforce as I was curious this little event.

Some food for thought. - the guy was not employed by the city, he volunteered as such OSHA would not be involved. OSHA would only be involved if he was an employee. Nor would the state. So no matter how dumb what he did was not a violation of safety cause he was not a employee. If the city paid him then OSHA would be all over it.

Now here is the kicker the city has no obligation to replace his gear. Again because he volunteered. The same if he had been injured or killed. He volunteer to do due something that was reckless. And as a PSD he would have known to be reckless.

About the only way that anything could be done wold be to have a chat with the city's insurance provider. As they like to know things like this because they would probably advise them that they are not to use volunteers who are not specifically train in the commercial work that needs to be performed. Lest there will not be coverage in case of an accident.