Scuba divers trapped

[ScubaCrossing]

By JULIE MOULT (SUN Newspaper)

HOPE was fading last night for two scuba divers feared trapped in an underwater tunnel since Good Friday.

The man and woman, aged 25 and 27, are believed to have spent the day in the 260ft-deep flooded quarry

The on-site National Diving Centre alerted cops when the couple — believed to be experienced divers — failed to reappear at 5.30pm.

Twenty officers, including divers and a helicopter, searched Dayhouse Quarry in Tidenham, Gloucs, all weekend.

The families of the man, from Ascot, Berks, and woman, from nearby Sunningdale, travelled to watch the operation yesterday. The hunt will resume today with specialist sonar equipment.

A spokesman for Gloucestershire police — who are treating the couple as missing — said: “It is a massive expanse of water and is very deep, which makes things difficult for the diving teams.

There are ledges and tunnels under the water and it may be that they became trapped in one of those tunnels.”

“We know they arrived at 9.30am on Friday but we do not know when they went missing.”

The lake was created in 1997 after it shut as a working quarry.

The diving centre is due to host the UK National Freedive Championships next month.

Divers Missing

 

[H2Andy]

yes i saw that earlier. i hope for the best.

 

[String]

http://www.thisisgloucestershire.co...ayContent&sourceNode=111000&contentPK=9562902

Nothing found still.

That place is 45 minutes from me and was opened last year as the national diving centre with depths from 8m - 80m, decompression chamber on site and so on. This is the first probable fatality at the site.

There was an off chance sunday id get my first dive there (as our boat is broken yet again so killed entire weekend) but it never happened. Its been a VERY bad year for UK diving incidents so far and the season only started last week properly.

Its worth noting all these mentions of ledges, tunnels etc but its speculation, nobody knows anything. Its assumed the people are in the lake somewhere but where and what caused them not to surface nobody knows. They could be at the bottom of the 80m in open ground for all we know. Newspaper just speculating.

 

[H2Andy]

nod... i've been reading about Dorthea Quarry. seems like a rash of deaths there.

 

[String]

Theyve had more open water than Dorothea and other places.

This is the time of year traditionally to get most incidents as divers rusty from not diving over the winter get in the water with unmaintained kit, boats and so on but even so the casualty rate is way higher than normal.

Dorothea is becoming infamous but im of the opinion it isnt inherently dangerous - its very cold, very deep and very dark yes but that doesnt make a site lethal. If you read some of the incident reports and causes most of them are attibuted to human error and doing something that with hindsight would seem kamikaze. What you never read about are the numbers of people succesfully using the site weekly who DONT die.

 

[H2Andy]

no worries, i account for that, knowing the nature of the reporting beast

 

[String]

Just to add to me saying its a bad year, just found this:

http://www.mcga.gov.uk/c4mca/mcga-d...s-release?mcga_news_id=2490&month=4&year=2004

Another missing diver today.

 

[String]

2 bodies have now been found at NDC:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/gloucestershire/3621417.stm

 

[gfisher4792]

So sad and so young....

 

[H2Andy]

just terrible