Diver missing in Mississippi

[jasondbaker]

Minneapolis Star Tribune:

Authorities were searching today for a recreational diver who was missing and feared dead in the Mississippi River.

Three people were diving to a submerged car off Hidden Falls Park when a tether connecting them got caught in the car, said Mark Naylon, a spokesman for the Ramsey County sheriff's office.

``Two of the divers were able to get out and the other one has not been found yet,'' he said.

The diver's air tank would have been depleted before rescue crews could have arrived, Naylon said.

The other two divers tried to free their companion to no avail, he said. Divers from Ramsey and Hennepin counties were trying to find him.

One of the other divers apparently told police that the missing diver appeared to be injured with he found him and tried to free him, KARE-TV reported. The current apparently swept the diver away, KARE-TV reported.

The victim's name was not immediately released.

[jasondbaker]

Minneapolis Star Tribune:

A 21-year-old man was missing and feared dead Sunday after scuba diving with friends in the Mississippi River off Hidden Falls Regional Park in St. Paul.

Ramsey County Sheriff's Lt. Ron Petrusson said the man was "drift diving" with four others who were all holding a rope and searching in the murky mid-river current for a submerged car they knew was there. Apparently the rope caught on the car, and one diver's equipment became tangled in the vehicle as well. The diver next to him cut the rope but could not free the diver, whose mouthpiece was already out of his mouth, Petrusson said.

"He was probably in trouble already at that time," Petrusson said.

The other diver could not hold on to the victim in the current. That diver and the others were swept downstream, and it was 10 to 15 minutes before they could call for help.

Cold search

Authorities responded to an emergency call shortly before 11 a.m. and searched with a sonar device from a boat for much of Sunday afternoon and into the evening, but they did not find the missing man.

The search was to continue today.

After several hours of searching with the sonar device in depths of 15 to 17 feet, Petrusson said searchers believed the diver's body might have become separated from the car but was probably weighted enough to sink nearby.

He said the river's current was too risky for divers to search on Sunday. He added that searchers hadn't been aware of any submerged cars in that stretch of river, which is not only a shipping lane but popular with anglers and boaters. They found not one but two cars in the area, which Petrusson said he suspected had been stolen and ditched. The sheriff's water patrol did not intend to remove the cars, he said.

The area is between Hidden Falls Park on the St. Paul side and a popular off-leash dog park in Minneapolis.

Local scuba instructor Mike Daust said no one he knows dives in the Mississippi River because it is too unpredictable and dangerous.

"The visibility is so bad," said Daust, who has been diving for about a decade. "The river is always moving and sometimes it's moving faster than at other times. Once you drop in the water, you really have no idea where you're going to end up downstream."

The current at Hidden Falls Park is "one of the fastest reaches [of the river] in the Twin Cities," in part because the stretch is narrow and located just below a lock and dam, said Whitney Clark, executive director of Friends of the Mississippi River. Recent rains also would have reduced water clarity, Clark said.

Clark said he hasn't heard of a diver drowning in the river in his eight years with Friends of the Mississippi. Only biologists dive regularly at Hidden Falls Park, he said.

[pink_fins]

Jason thanks for the post.
Lets all be careful out there.
We all dive almost 0 vis lakes/rivers and should think twice before we do it.

gail

[jasondbaker]

Diver still missing in river near St. Paul park
Bill Mcauliffe and Kevin Duchschere, Star Tribune
November 23, 2004 DROWN1123



The morning was chilly enough for ice to skim the standing water in St. Paul's Hidden Falls Park on Sunday. But as Nic Harter hefted on his scuba gear and waded into the Mississippi River with four other divers, there is a good chance he was thinking about the warm waters of Greece, where he was planning to dive in January.

Today, the 21-year-old St. Olaf College junior is still missing after somehow becoming entangled in a submerged car -- the target of a dive that has even other diving enthusiasts talking about the risks of diving in the river.

"He had a passion for water -- especially being underwater," said his father, Brian Harter, who with his wife, Sandy, was watching Monday as a team of Ramsey County Sheriff's deputies probed the river, searching for their son.

The search, which continued after dark Monday with recovery workers using a sonar device, was expected to resume today. Also today, a daily prayer service at St. Olaf was to be devoted to Nic Harter and the rescue workers.

The Harters said their son, a Hopkins High School graduate and English and Ancient Studies major who had also published his own book of poetry, had begun taking scuba diving as part of a physical education class this fall. When that ended, he pursued a more advanced certification through an independent scuba instruction program in Northfield, Minn. The man believed to be the instructor declined to comment by phone Monday.

Diving adventure

On Sunday, Harter and another student, the instructor and two fire-and-rescue workers from Randolph, Minn., entered the river holding a rope to help them find the submerged car. The plan was to drift downstream in a line perpendicular to the current, hook the car and pull themselves toward it. But when the diver behind Harter moved up the rope, he found Harter already unconscious, according to Eric Cole, a St. Olaf professor and veteran diver who had dived with Harter in a lake near Northfield last week. Cole had also planned to make Sunday's dive, but didn't, because of a sore elbow. He was called to the scene Sunday and talked with the divers and rescue workers.

Dangerous conditions

Ramsey County Lt. Ron Petrusson said the current and the river's murky conditions were too dangerous for the county's own divers to aid in the search Sunday and Monday, although he said a diver with special equipment may get involved today. And staffers at a dozen Twin Cities scuba shops said Monday that they regard the metro Mississippi as off-limits for recreational diving because of the current and low visibility.

Josh Dexter, manager of Smith Diving in Minneapolis, said his company uses the Mississippi River near the Grain Belt Brewery, where it is wider and not as fast-moving, for divers trying to qualify for "master" certification. Such divers usually have made 75 or more dives over three or four years, and the certification dives involve a spotter in a boat, Dexter said.

But Cole, the St. Olaf professor who said he has dived more than 300 times, including once in the Mississippi, said the spot near Hidden Falls didn't appear too risky to him when he arrived Sunday.

"It didn't look to me like anything I wouldn't have jumped into myself," he said, noting a strong current but a sand-gravel bottom and a gentle slope. Cole said he thought the group's dive plan was simple.

"It's hard to see this portrayed as an irresponsible dive," he said. "It was a challenging dive. Maybe more challenging than they'd thought, because it had rained the night before. I saw it out there, and I thought, 'Yeah, you could do this dive.' But you don't know what you're going to encounter. In my view, this was a freak accident."

Love of diving

The Harters said their son Nic dove last month on the Madeira, a shipwreck in Lake Superior near Split Rock Lighthouse. The remains of the Madeira are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Although the wreck attracts more than 1,000 divers a year, Cole said he believes it is a more challenging dive than the area near Hidden Falls.

The Harters shrugged when asked if they knew what their son's long-term goals might have been.

"He was just a sweet soul and a very giving person," Sandy Harter said. "He was a very special kid. I know everybody thinks their kid is special, but it's true."

Bill McAuliffe is at mcaul@startribune.com