Photo By Chief Petty Officer Gilbert Bolibol | 171104-N-WR119-023 SAN DIEGO (November 4, 2017) Navy Diver 2nd Class Austin Hughes,...... read more read more
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Navy Diver 1st Class Casey Smith carefully watched the gauges monitoring the divers working below the ship’s hull. Labored breathing rasped from a speaker on the console while Smith called out readings.
“Three-five!...three-zero!....two-five!” Two men slowly shepherded the red and blue lifelines to the divers beneath the opaque waters of San Diego Bay, intently checking every foot of their ascent and standing ready for any sign of a problem from the men below.
Smith continues to monitor the gauges as the dive supervisor directs from the deck’s edge. The whole team on the deck of the Hornbeck Offshore Services (HOS) ship Dominator, an offshore services tug, intimately knows this intricate evolution. A slight miscalculation or mistake could cause serious injury or death within a matter of seconds, but the sailors of the Undersea Rescue Command are practiced and ready.
From their base at Naval Air Station North Island, the reservist sailors of the URC have deployed on missions ranging from repairing disabled submarines to salvaging damaged or destroyed aircraft or equipment. Their mission has taken them throughout the deep waters of the Pacific aboard the the Dominator, a vessel also homeported at NASNI. The URC team is a model of cooperation between highly skilled sailors who perform a precise, demanding and dangerous task in some of the most challenging marine environments on the planet.
“It’s a job with many hazards,” said Navy Diver Chief Ryan Kirby as he helped direct the training evolution. Kirby listed pulmonary embolisms, mechanical failures and the whole range of life-threatening injuries related to decompression as the primary hazards of what he described as “surface supplied diving.” Kirby, a native of Honolulu Hawaii, pointed out three thick, color-coded hoses extending from the console that he aptly termed “umbilical’s.”
“We have one umbilical for communication, another for sensing depth, and another for supplying oxygen” he said. Two “tenders” meticulously controlled the descent and ascent of each hose from the deck. If communication is suddenly lost, the tenders suddenly become the only communicative link between the diver and the surface. “The tender’s job is to monitor direct line ‘pull signals’” said Kirby. One pull means the diver is OK, two pulls mean the diver needs slack, he said. Other pull signals let the tender know if there is a serious problem, and the team must work rapidly and without error to bring an endangered diver to safety.
“The whole team is a trust relationship,” he said, as two yellow-helmeted divers surfaced and were pulled from the water. “Everyone on the team is qualified for each position above and below the surface, from the dive supervisor to the tenders to the guy operating the console that controls the oxygen” he said. “Even the guy taking logs is making sure the proper decompression and safety precautions are being followed.”
The two divers were quickly hauled on deck by their team mates who then helped them remove their gear.
“How do you feel?” Kirby asked. Navy Diver 1st Class Joshua Tomolak, fresh from the deep, who removed his hermetically sealed yellow dive helmet and grinned as he took a deep breath.
A native of Waterford, Michigan, Tomolak has been a Navy diver for seven years and describes the day’s dive as pretty routine for the team.
“It’s cold and dark down there today," Tomolak said. “In those conditions you just hold on to your dive buddy for dear life.” Though looking winded and cold in his wet suit, Tomolak sat and took in the fresh San Diego air as his fellow sailors surrounded him and checked his gear.
“We take a lot of precautions and there are lots of things that can happen,” he said. “I’m ready to go again.”
| Date Taken: | 11.04.2017 |
| Date Posted: | 11.06.2017 19:25 |
| Story ID: | 254172 |
| Location: | SAN DIEGO, CA, US |
| Web Views: | 140 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Sailors of the Undersea Rescue Command train for hazardous missions, by PO2 Rudi Heinrich, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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