cDiver.net

The Commercial Diver Network

Crazy/Cool/Close Call Diving Stories

Hello all-

I am the Project Manager in charge of running cDiver.net. We are wanting to write an article about any crazy/cool/close call diving stories and thought we'd open it up to all of your who may have had a story covering this topic.

So if any of you have a crazy/cool/close call diving story or have a buddy that has had one, please if you could find a minute or two, post it here with as much detail as you can. Who knows it might make the cut and you might find your story on our homepage! Even if you don't though, it's always fun to share interesting stories with other divers.

Thanks everyone, we really do appreciate it!

John

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Bill Gardner on March 20, 2010 at 11:16pm

if you get a chance check out Papy One photo/blog its very cool.

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Permalink Reply by John Broetje on April 2, 2010 at 1:42pm

Great stories so far guys... When I write up the article it'll probably be something along the lines of "The top 10 craziest close call deep sea diving stories". It'll get posted on the homepage under the "featured articles" then get pushed out to every social news site, should be pretty darn cool to see what happens.

Thanks for replying and if anyone has anymore cool/interesting stories, don't hesitate to post em!

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Permalink Reply by John Broetje on April 7, 2010 at 10:54am

No, I will be writing an article compiling these stories together. The article will go onto the homepage of cDiver in the "featured articles" section. I just thought it might be something the commercial diving community would be interested in. In no way, shape or form will I be trying to make money off any of these stories.

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Permalink Reply by Dennis Wilcox on April 6, 2010 at 9:13pm

I was working inland at a paper mill located in Mississippi. The job scope consisted of some simple rigging in a raw water lagoon with a depth of 20 FFW. Basically a swimming pool. I was to rig up a four part sling to lift a trash rack off a 72" intake pipe at the bottom of the lagoon. Now inland crane operators are a little different from offshore operators so I chose to prep the rigging underwater and bring the four part to the surface to hook to the block above the waterline as appose to lowering the block underwater. As I was giving crane signal to hold the load and boom down at the surface with a 8 part block hanging over me. I noticed the 40 ton Grove Crane with all it's boom extended out and a jib on the end begin to lift off the ground on the opposite side and the outriggers disappearing into the ground on the boom side. Now I haven’t even hooked up to the load yet and I have a 40 Ton crane coming down on top of me. The crane boom hit the water in about 3 seconds with the block sitting on bottom of the lagoon and a mile of wire rope piled on top of it, right were I would have been rigging the lift underwater. Don't assume your crane operator knows what he is doing or how to set up for a lift. Much less work with a diver underwater. And that's why I chose to hook to the block above the waterline.

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Permalink Reply by A.. Parnell on April 7, 2010 at 10:40am

Good Story Dennis. Ok doing a pier removal in San Diego that required alot of burning of the piles off I was called in to do for a contractor my first clue was that he wanted to bring in a AC welding machine to burn with-no no no !. In pretty much disbelief I finally argued that we did in fact need a DC machine-jeez what was this guy thinking? Ok moving along one pile burnt at a time finally got to a section that required a little more safety conscern and I told the contractor that I needed for him to be sure that the piles were at least tied off so they wouldnt fall in my direction or have that posiability. At this point your about to guess what happened next Yep ! After the final cutting the pile fell and pinned my air hose under it damn it Jim are you trying to kill me ? Well he missed his chance and I was finally able to get out from the mess. Upon reaching the surface I was pissed and told the contractor he was fired ! You should have seen the look on his face as I told him he was fired total disbelief. Later I hired him again and we finished the job. It feels good to fire your boss especially when they are not paying attention and are trying to kill you. So the moral of this story is be real careful of flakey contractors and supervisors you could get killed if your not careful and lucky.

Fred Johnson has a good story of a burning job North of San Francisco where piles fell on one of his divers maybe he will add some more color to this website. Are you there Fred ?