Reaction to report of the ASP Port

Par Jean-Mée DESVEAUX

Lexpress du 13 avril 2013

The letter of the Assistant Superintendent of Police (Port) to the Police Commissioner has not gone unnoticed by a bereaved nation.

The whole country was reeling under such a shock at the tragic loss of lives of our compatriots that the designation of that national calamity as an “incident” was suggestive of a certain callousness. But proceeding further into the communiqué, it was going to get much worse. I had to reread the fifth paragraph several times before I could believe the language used to describe the retrieval by the police diving team, of the remains of six of the deceased: “A reconstruction exercise in company of divers who FISHED OUT six bodies was effected at the Southern Underpath."'

Language conveys meaning, attitude and values, sir. If, as an ordinary Mauritian, I found equating the retrieval of so many loved ones to a fishing expedition shocking, how downright offensive must this have been deemed by the bereaved families. So much for the form and lack of decorum and empathy, let us now look at the technical question raised by that retrieval.

I watched an MBC bulletin where the police captain of the diving team that had participated in the “rescue” operation described that process. The Captain of the team explained that the diving team only dived into the watery grave once a sufficient amount of water had been pumped out so as to leave a layer of air between the level of the water and the ceiling of the tunnel. He explained that this was for the protection of the members of the diving team in case they encountered a problem and had to resurface without air.

It was unclear whether the description applied to both the tunnels and the waterfront parking. That the police divers would only dive into a site where several Mauritians are known to have been trapped if and when the water had receded enough to allow them to breathe at the surface is shocking. What that means is that if one of the victims had miraculously found a nook or cranny containing a pocket of air, his chances of survival would have evaporated due to the reaction time of the diving team finding pumps, electricity etc.

A trained police scuba diver has an air bottle of some 15 litres on his back. He can even have two if he wishes, but let us limit him, for arguments sake, to a one bottle backpack. At the surface above the water, this means he or she has 3000 litres of air in the bottle. Supposing that he was to spend all his time at the bottom of one of the two tunnels (say 5 metres in depth), he would be under a pressure of 1.5 atmosphere and would have 2000 litres to breathe. A recreational diver could breathe a good 15 litres per minute but a thoroughly trained and specially selected police diver would be sure to breathe 10 litres per minute only. He can therefore breathe for 200 minutes without resurfacing (three hours and thirty minutes) at the deepest point in the tunnel. Making allowance for the parking being deeper, we are still talking of a lot of time without need to resurface. In addition, the basic protocol of all diving is that one only dives with a buddy who is always next to you if you run out of air. All divers must have two regulators (the one they use to breathe and the “octopus”, second regulator, that is used by a buddy if he or she runs out of air). In other words, the balance of probabilities is this: a team of divers with a breathing autonomy of more than three hours each, hesitating for hours to enter a watery trap, the depth of a swimming pool, to try to rescue members of the public that might still be alive.

What that MBC interview therefore amounts to is this. In spite of the odds of running out of air during their dive in the tunnel being, if not zero, at least extremely minimal, our police force would wait for hours for the water to recede before venturing to ascertain if any helpless victim has survived the catastrophe. The questions that come to mind are numerous: Can the Commissioner confirm the veracity of what was aired on MBC as described above? If that MBC news reel conveys the actual state of affairs, is this the normal rescue protocol in other police forces internationally? Next time, we are faced with a similar tragedy, will the professional police divers continue to choose a zero risk to themselves even if it means a death sentence for any one trapped alive?