Vessel Divers Searching Sunk Superyacht- Sicily

[Angelo Farina]

@Nick_Radov That's very patronising... What do you know about the training of Italian Fire Brigade?
Although you may personally not imagine diving 50 m with air, this was not unusual - to not say absolutely common - for a long time for trained divers (at least in Europe...). (I won't go into the details how deep and how long i use to dive when my hair was less grey... that would be showing off...)
Maybe @Angelo Farina can enlight us - if he is still around, long time no hear.
...

You don't need deco gas... an additional 10 L or 12 L air tank at 5 m will be sufficient.

Standard recreational training here is to max depth of 50m in air, with deco on back gas.
These are also the standard operational limits for Fire Brigade divers. But nowadays a number of them get additional "deep dive" training (I think up to 60m, which is the max CMAS limit), with extended bottom time and accelerated deco with Nitrox.
For these dives, normally a single 15-liters, 232 bars steel tank (Faber), air filled, is employed. Double valves, two fully independent regs. Sometimes a pony tank is added, if penetration is planned, or the single steel cylinder is replaced with a compact twin tank (typically 10+10 liters at 232 bars).
50% Nitrox for deco is made available with additional tanks hanging under the support boat.
Max time is typically 20 minutes bottom time at 50m.

 

[Angelo Farina]

Ali80s are very rarely used in Europe for primary diving cylinders; steel cylinders are far more common. The rescuers appeared to be using 15 litre steel cylinders without decompression gasses. That’s 15 x 232 bar = 3,480 litres = 122.89504 cubic feet.

Exactly,. This is the standard tank for Fire Brigade divers here in Italy, And they usually overfill at 250 bar for demanding dives...

 

[Angelo Farina]

I am not at all sure that the Vigili del Fuoco divers knew what they were doing. The fact that they were using single-tank open-circuit rigs filled with air and no stages strongly indicates that they didn't know what they were doing and were just winging it without understanding the risks. Most public safety divers don't frequently train for dives to 50m or significant deco or penetration into overhead environments. While I admire their courage, they're lucky they didn't hurt themselves before letting the experts take over.

Wrong.
Fire Brigade divers are the best divers here in Italy. I was training them in 1984 during my "military" service...
They are specialised exactly in this type of "body recovery" operations in narrow/obstructed spaces.
However, they operate only within prefixed operational safe limits (the same as recreational CMAS divers, 50m meter max, in air, 20min max bottom time, "short" deco) and with standardised equipment (15 liters steel tank at 232 bars). Enriched deco gas is available at 6m for deco, they do not carry stages. sometimes a small pony tank if penetration is planned, but not mandatory.
When their operation limits are to be exceeded, "civil protection" special operators are called in (as it happened also in this case). These are volunteers, but organized in a military-like structure, and funded by the government..
In this case they called operators specialised in deep wreck penetration, which of course use quite different equipment and procedures.
Fire Brigade professionals and Civil Protection volunteers are used to cooperate strictly during emergencies, such a earthquakes, floods, etc. And often emergency tests and rehearsals are conducted jointly for training.
This creates an highly flexible and globally cheap-to-maintain emergency service, thanks to the cooperation between professionals and volunteers.

 

[Centrals]

I survived three days in a capsized boat on the ocean floor – praying in my air bubble

Harrison Okene had no choice but to listen in the dark as the shouts of his colleagues fell silent. His throat throbbed and his tongue peeled. Ten years on, he explains why he loves the sea more than ever – and decided to become a diver

www.theguardian.com

Very lucky fellow.

Remind me another story of the rescue of the Thai football team inside a flooded cave in 2018.

 

[nadwidny]

Wrong.
Fire Brigade divers are the best divers here in Italy.

Not a good endorsement.. Going by the rest of the standards you posted, the "best of the best" bar is set pretty low there in being able to actually get stuff done in the environment that this recovery operated in.

 

[Wibble]

Are we now all familiar with commercial diving practices?

 

[CriticalThinker]

@JohnN
These are divers from an Italian Fire Brigade, not the occasional rcreation diver. You can be sure, that they knew what they were doing. As said before: deco stops would not have been a problem as support crew would have provided full tanks while divers in water to stay at 5 m.

They did not expect that...

Why would you assume this...? Foreign countries have proven to be immensely inept in disaster recovery missions-- just look at the Costa Concordia in the same area not so long ago. Italy is a wonderful country but they lack a lot of what the US has in spades for rescue missions-- including clear and consistent communication.

 

[Angelo Farina]

Why would you assume this...? Foreign countries have proven to be immensely inept in disaster recovery missions-- just look at the Costa Concordia in the same area not so long ago. Italy is a wonderful country but they lack a lot of what the US has in spades for rescue missions-- including clear and consistent communication.

This is entirely false in case of Italy!
Italy has a powerful integrated rescue and disaster recovery system, based on the integration of two pillars:.
1) The Fire Brigade, made of professional, highly trained firefighters, and which include many specialised operators (radio operators, helicopterists, drone pilots, scuba divers, mountain climbers, etc.). They have a lot of equipment, including helicopters, boats and any kind of terrestrial and amphibious vehicles.
Almost half of firefighters are in permanent service, the other half are in "discontinuous" service, being recalled in case of disaster. I served as permanent firefighter during year 1984, instead of the military service, and then I remained in "discontinuous" service until last year. I was recalled in service just twice during this period...
2) the Civil Protection, a large organisation based on volunteers, usully organised in societies or clubs, but structured under the control of a small number of state-emplyed personnel.
These include clubs of offroad vehicles, trial bikers, rescue dog trainers, radio operators, speleologists, scuba divers (often in highly specialised teams for deep tech diving, wrecks, caves, speleology, alpine lakes under ice, etc.).

Of course such a dual structure, involving different parties, and not under military control (everything is under the Ministry of Interiors, not the Ministry of Defense such as Carabinieri corps, which is the other state-controlled big military organisation capable of rescue and disaster management) is slower and less coordinated.
But it has several advantages, which in the long run, and with the experience of many disasters (earthquakes, floods, fires, chemical pollution, Chernobyl, etc.) did prove to be very effective:
1) fast: each unit is freec to start acting without preliminary orders, facing the emergency as soon as it happens. We have more than 100.000 volunteers, and they are allowed to start their action as they see a danger or disaster. This has some drawbacks, of course: this quick action is uncoordinated, often duplicated, and until a proper communication network is established, the typical Italian confusion reigns. But it has proven to save lifes, albeit not looking "professional" for foreigners used only to military-mode operations...
2) cheap: this means that with a given budget you can employ many more men, women and tools.
3) flexible: you only allocate the specific resources required, having access to the best specialists (usually highly paid professionals, such as mr. Danilo Coppe, one of the best explosive experts in the world) - and for free!
4) highly welcome by the population, as both firefigheters and civil protection operators are beloved, and people help them spontaneously. It is much different with military operators...

So, @CriticalThinker , please stop spreading false information on our disaster recovery system, without having any first hand information.
I have been active part of this system for most of my life, I even trained Fire Brigade scuba divers during my firefighter service, as at the time I was already a 3-stars CMAS instructor and an active specialist in a scuba diving club, being a Civil Pretection operator specialised in body recovery in muddy rivers and lakes with zero visibility.
If you need more detailed info on our system just ask, I will provide further details, based on a large number of reharsals and training sessions, which I took part into. Every year there are a dozen of them in every Italian main town, for testing the interaction between the two main pillars and the various teams of Civil Protection.

 

[Hiszpan]

Just from a far away perspective, without knowing the ins and outs of the Italian system, diving to 50m on air to spend there few minutes looking for bodies and then having to spend tens of minutes on deco does not look like the best effectiveness to safety ratio.

 

[Angelo Farina]

Just from a far away perspective, without knowing the ins and outs of the Italian system, diving to 50m on air to spend there few minutes looking for bodies and then having to spend tens of minutes on deco does not look like the best effectiveness to safety ratio.

First thing to understand is that a dive of 15 min at 50m in air, with proper deco stops, is what recreational divers do every day here in the Mediterranean Sea.
For us it is just our normal rec dive....
Not considered excessively dangerous, nor requiring any "tech" training or equipment.
CMAS (or BSAC) is not PADI.

Then, of course, in this rescue operation, after the first inspections seeing no air trapped, and hence no possible survivor to rescue, the operation was reclassified as "body recovery", so it was handed over from the first-response teams (firefighters) to the specialised operators who did actually penetrate the wreck and recovered the bodies, using more suitable procedures and equipment.
The approach here is that a fast action, even with improvisation and suboptimal equipment, can save a life.
This involves some risk for the operator, which is considered acceptable and part of his duty for a firefighter.
And I can testify this first hand, having been a firefighter, and having really risked my life during a couple of first-response actions (in fires, not underwater). It is part of the firefighter attitude....
When instead the operator is not a firefighter, but an affiliate to a club, or a professional, or a scientific expert, working in the Civil Protection structure, this approach is entirely reversed. The operator is a civil, an unpaid volunteer, and must be kept safe as the first priority, even if this causes the body recovery operation to be aborted.
This dual-attitude approach is another of the advantages of our hybrid system.
I fully understand how this looks strange from abroad, you see two teams cooperating, but working with completely opposite approaches to risk management for operators.
And the "professional" team made of public employees (firefighters) is the one using light equipment and less safe procedures, while the Civil Protection operators are employing very high end equipment, longer and safer procedures and appear to be the "real professionals", albeit being instead unpaid volunteers.