Diving for dollars

>> The death of commercial diver Martine Côté raises questions about industry safety

by NOEMI LOPINTO

Martine Côté loved the water. The 28 year old was often heard to say she felt closest to God when in her diving gear, fish swimming all around her and the ice on the water's surface magnifying the sun's rays. So perhaps it's fitting that it is where she met her death. However, for the small team of Hydro-Québec employees who were trying frantically to pull her to the surface, to colleague Eric de Vries who was at her side when her hand began to loosen from his grasp, there is a need for answers.

On Nov. 30, a team of engineers, commercial divers and their support staff were conducting a routine underwater video inspection of the power-house dam, generating station Hull 2. Martine Côté went under the surface at 12:30 p.m. and within less than half an hour, radioed that she was in trouble.

According to public relations officer for Hydro-Québec, Eric Moisan, Côté had encountered what is known as "suction." Suction occurs when there is a hole or fissure in the dam wall on the upstream side, and it means death for divers.

Says Moisan: "We had no idea. The basin had been seen dry, and there was no hole at that time. At 20 feet of water, the visibility isn't so great, unless there was a vortex you can't see it."

In the flurry since Côté's death, very little is clear. Rumour among the divers is that the last time the basin was seen dry was anywhere from four years ago to 22 years ago. It is also not clear how she died--whether from hypothermia, suffocation or the tremendous pressure on her body which could have caused a cardiac arrest. Officials at Hydro-Québec say only that she was declared dead at the hospital after resuscitation attempts had failed.

The suction pulling on Côté's body was approximately 3,000 pounds per square feet in 20 feet of water. It was so strong that it ripped off her suit. There was no crane on the site, so the 14 workers on the surface were trying to pull her up manually. She was also not wearing a crotch harness. During the pulling from above, her body harness fell apart and her umbilical--a cord that provides air--was severed.

On the surface, chaos reigned. Emergency workers were bickering with the engineering team about protocol, while firefighters and ambulance workers milled about.

Moisan claims the team called divers from another company to try to get her out. They pulled unsuccessfully with nylon cables, finally getting her out at about 2 p.m. "This woman was special," says Moisan. "She was Hydro's [and Quebec's] only female commercial diver."

Occupational hazards

The inquiry into the death is being conducted by the Commission de la santé et de la sécurité du travail (CSST), despite accusations from divers that the CSST is not competent enough for the job. "The CSST inspectors are given a two-week course in commercial diving. They are not qualified to assess faulty equipment," says one diver who does not wish to be named. "Their interest is in saving money, not lives."

According to Daniel Legault of the CSST, the reason for the divers' inspection of the site was to find the source of a leak. "Leaks are normal in dams, they happen over time. We will analyze whether or not they followed procedural protocol, both in the prevention of accidents and emergency protocol," says Legault.

CSST statistics claim one commercial diver dies every two years in Quebec. Gordon Hayes of the Canadian Association of Diving Contractors thinks those are very conservative statistics. "We lose guys on dams all the time. At least one person a year gets killed on a dam," says Hayes. "I think this is the third person this year who's been killed by suction. I don't think those people had any idea what was going on, because if they did they sure as hell wouldn't have sent her there."

Hayes claims he has refused to dive where there might be a leak and has spent days sealing dams before he went under the surface. "You don't go in the basin unless its been well sealed," says Hayes. "You're supposed to ensure that it is--you don't go down and use a diver for a plug. You lower sandbags down--there are different ways of ensuring there's no suction." If safety measures like sandbagging were not applied, then Hayes says there is cause to believe somebody was criminally negligent. "If they were losing water--that's suction. Whoever was in charge of that, the supervisor, should never have let that happen."

Hayes believes the CSST is qualified to conduct the investigation, but doesn't put enough effort into prevention. "The trick," says Hayes, "is to make sure all divers, all contractors, follow standards. You need a minimum three-man crew, at least three air supplies for divers, and you have to have a standby diver on site that can reach your diver and bring him back to the surface in under four minutes. She was down there an hour and a half."

Lone wolves

Commercial diving involves a myriad of potential dangers: decompression sickness, differential pressure, suction, air supply and inadequate or obsolete gear. Long-time commercial divers suffer from a variety of work-related illnesses, ranging from neurological damage to spinal cord injuries to bone necrosis. Yet divers themselves are not organized under any one union, falling in a general way under the umbrella of the Commission de Construction du Québec (CCQ). The CCQ does not recognize diving as a special category of construction, because divers fulfill so many different functions.

The representative of the Quebec chapter of the Canadian Professional Divers Association (CPDA), Pierre Lefèvre, says divers work in maintenance, inspection, ship repairs, construction--in all kinds of environments, some of which are toxic. Wages are dependent on the agreement between the contractor who hires them and the client company. They are not guaranteed dental or health insurance, stable wages, eight-hour days or lunch breaks.

"If you are doing inspection," says Lefèvre, "your wages drop to $15 per hour. Twelve-hour days and six-month-long contracts overseas are not very good for your social life. The divorce rate is high."

So why haven't divers got a union? "You have to remember that these are very individualistic people, and it's difficult to have cohesion among them," says Lefèvre. "The CSST has a few inspectors, but there are so many jobs going on all over the province at the same time that they are spread too thin, and divers won't speak up because they know there will be disciplinary action against them. If you complain about a job or a piece of equipment, they won't hire you again."

No consolation

Sylvain Cormier, a recently injured, now ex-commercial diver who worked with Côté, says that due to overall costs, employers can't bid high enough on jobs to conduct them safely. "They'll cut corners in equipment or in time," says Cormier. "They want to save on labour, so they'll make a guy do time in decompression rather than take him out on schedule and put a new guy in. We knew there were cracks in the dam, we used to play around and throw shit in those holes. We saw whole logs disappear. The problem is not the dive teams but the structure around them: Hydro-Québec, CCQ, CSST. There's not enough money put into doing the job the right way, let alone prevention."

In March 2000, after a six-month recovery from decompression sickness, Cormier requested an interview with members of both the CSST and Hydro-Québec. He claims he warned them of the shabby security measures on work sites. "Nobody believes the divers until something happens," says Cormier.

Unknown to herself, Martine Côté was due to receive an award from Hydro-Québec for being a woman in a non-traditional field of work. She has been described as a shy person, very proud and very independent. Her aunt, Christiane Legault, says the results of the inquiry will not affect the family. "It will console no one," she says.

Of the 77 commercial divers working in Quebec, 60 attended her funeral. Pierre Lefèvre says it might be months before they get over her death. "There is no conspiracy to Martine's death, but I think there might have been ignorance and negligence, which go hand in hand anyway."