Safety Report

Problems with the Healy's fatal diving accident on Aug. 17, 2006

Lieutenant Hill planned the dive for only three divers and even when questioned about what the regulations permitted she responded that it was allowed even though; the navy diving manual which the coast guard ad hears to says the dive requires at least four divers in an operation, a buddy pair in the water, a standby diver who is fully equipped and a trained dive supervisor managing the dive.

It says she had been below the Ice pack seven times the previous summer, but they were assisted dives not scuba dives and she had never taken part in a cold-water scuba dive and neither of the other two divers had any cold-water scuba training.

Hill's military dive qualifications had lapsed and when she had previously been signed for requalification two of the four mandatory dives were recreational which were not authorized to count so she technically wasn't qualified to dive that day either even though she was the ship's diving officer.

Prior to the dive Duque laid his gear down on the ice which can cause it to cool to such an extent that the equipment can ice up in the water. It possibly lay there for up to 40 minutes.

None of the four handlers used to maintain the lines were qualified for the task or properly instructed by Hill and to increase risks even more several of the men on the job had consumed alcohol. Hill gave the tenders wrong line signals as well which further complicated the communication between the divers and those on the surface.

Hill and Duque were wearing an extremely large amount of weight and had not attached it in a manner that was easily removable in the case of an emergency. Duque's glove leak which prompted him to add glove liners which reduced his dexterity and ability to form routine and necessary scuba hand signals added more danger to the already tenuous dive. The last two errors