Diving Accidents

Nathan Meade, one of Australia's premier divers, was killed when he apparently misjudged a dive during practice and smashed into the concrete diving platform Thursday at Brisbane, Australia. Meade, 21, was pronounced dead at Princess Alexandra Hospital. Doctors said he suffered massive brain damage. The Australian high-dive champion was a top contender for a spot on his nation's 1988 Olympic team.

The search for a diver who went missing late Thursday while spearfishing in Laguna Beach was called off Friday afternoon, authorities said. The man was free-diving with two other spear fishermen in the ocean near Aliso Creek when he disappeared. His companions searched for him for about an hour before calling authorities at 6:38 p.m Thursday., said Coast Guard Petty Officer Christina Bozeman. Law enforcement, Coast Guard officials and lifeguards started searching the ocean for the man late Thursday and continued at daybreak Friday by boat and helicopter.

A 22-year-old Chatsworth woman died Friday in a scuba diving accident off Santa Catalina Island, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department reported. The woman, whose name was not released pending notification of relatives, was a student diver on a boat operated by Ventura Dive & Sport diving school, Deputy Douglas Miller said. Five other student divers and two teachers were swimming from a vessel called Peace in 100 feet of water about 10 a.m. in an area called Farnsworth Bank, Sgt.

A sheriff's rescue diver was rushed to a hospital with leg injuries Friday after becoming entangled in a sunken sailboat while searching the wreckage for its missing owner. Deputy Ken Kropidlowski, an 18-year veteran of the Orange County Sheriff's Department and a member of its dive team, was 30-feet deep off a jetty in Newport Beach when he got tangled in debris about 11 a.m. and made an emergency ascent, Jim Amormino, a sheriff's spokesman, said.

Dives into shallow surf along the Southern California coast have killed three people and injured at least 122 others since 1976, a study by the University of Southern California has found. The study, prompted by a rash of crippling injuries and multimillion-dollar lawsuits in 1984 and 1985, found that 41 victims were paralyzed or suffered other serious injuries over an 11-year period by "plunging dives" into the surf from shallow water at 20 beaches between San Diego and Santa Barbara.

A San Jose scuba diver died five days after she passed out below the surface entangled in kelp at Whalers Cove, officials said. Tammy Nguyen, 42, became the fifth person to die in a diving accident off the Central Coast in the last 10 months. Nguyen had been on life support at Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula since her accident Saturday. She died Wednesday. Nguyen came to the U.S. as a refugee from Vietnam when she was a teenager. She was described as an experienced diver.

The 4th District Court of Appeal has rejected a $6-million lawsuit filed by the parents of an Arizona boy who was paralyzed for life after a 1984 diving accident in Laguna Beach, city officials said. Byron Rombalski, who is now 18, was severely injured when he dove headfirst off a rock into shallow water at Pearl Street beach, City Manager Kenneth C. Frank said.

It wasn't so much his considerable talent as a surfer, in waves large and small, that made Jay Moriarty one of the world's most popular wave-riders. It was his talent as a human being. That has been known for years by his many friends, by his wife and family, and even by casual acquaintances. Moriarty wore a smile wherever he went; he finished his sentences with a laugh and generally put those around him in a better mood.

Former major league baseball pitcher Pete Redfern remembers with chilling clarity the day he became one of the more than 1,000 Americans paralyzed each year in diving accidents. "I stepped up to the sea wall, and the water looked to be about five feet deep, maybe four feet deep," Redfern said, recalling that day in Newport Beach in 1983 when he became a paraplegic, abruptly ending his career and changing his life forever.

Only 13 years old, Carlos Gallano already had seen friends drown--or rupture their eardrums deep underwater. Others were slashed by propellers or attacked by sharks. His job was to swim all day, pounding a heavy rock on fragile coral reefs to drive fish into nets. At night, he'd fight for space with 300 others crammed on a filthy, fish-filled deck. His pay for 10 months at sea: $75. "The hardship was too much," he said. "We were like slaves. "So I escaped.

The three New Jersey scuba divers who died while exploring a wreck off Key Largo drowned, according to autopsies completed Monday. Monroe County Medical Examiner's Office chief investigator Michael Bates said "saltwater drowning" was the cause of death for Jonathan Walsweer, 38, and Scott Stanley, 55, of Westfield, N.J.; and Kevin Coughlin, 51, of Chatham Borough, N.J. The three men ran out of air during a 135-foot dive inside the U.S. warship Spiegel Grove on Friday, investigators said.

State officials suspended operations of an elite dive team and fended off criticism Friday after a mysterious tragedy left two scuba divers dead during a routine underwater maintenance inspection in the California Aqueduct's inky depths. Tim Crawford and Martin Alvarado were supposed to remain in the turbid, debris-strewn water less than half an hour to examine the steel grates that protect the mammoth intakes of a pumping plant near Los Banos.

Two divers were killed Wednesday as they inspected equipment at a Central California pumping plant that is part of the state aqueduct system. The two, both experienced divers, were performing a routine inspection of the Dos Amigos Plant, which is 10 miles south of Los Banos, next to Interstate 5, when they apparently drowned. "A million and one things can go wrong," said Merced County Sheriff's Department spokesman Paul Barile. "You can dive 100 times and nothing will happen.

A San Jose scuba diver died five days after she passed out below the surface entangled in kelp at Whalers Cove, officials said. Tammy Nguyen, 42, became the fifth person to die in a diving accident off the Central Coast in the last 10 months. Nguyen had been on life support at Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula since her accident Saturday. She died Wednesday. Nguyen came to the U.S. as a refugee from Vietnam when she was a teenager. She was described as an experienced diver.

A Huntington Beach man died while diving at Crescent Bay Point on Sunday morning. Phuc Le, 35, was pronounced dead at South Coast Medical Center in Laguna Beach at 10:39 a.m. A diver with Le saw him floating shortly after they surfaced together, said Tom Trager, a Laguna Beach marine safety officer.

Rescue workers searched the water off Catalina Island on Sunday for a 62-year-old man who disappeared while scuba diving. U.S. Coast Guard crews rescued another diver about two miles off the island as the divers ascended in about 100 feet of water. Authorities did not know what caused the incident. The rescued diver, a 35-year-old man, was taken to a hospital in stable condition, according to Coast Guard Lt. Rob Griffiths.

Authorities Monday identified a scuba diver whose body was found off Santa Catalina Island over the weekend. Edward Hayes, 71, of Glendora and a 40-year-old unidentified companion entered Catalina Harbor between 3:45 and 4 p.m. Saturday, then split up to search for abalone, said Deputy Irma Becerra of the Sheriff's Information Bureau. The younger diver came back to the boat later and waited for Hayes, and then notified the Coast Guard.

A 38-year-old Arizona man drowned in 4 feet of water Sunday after he went scuba diving in an abandoned well shaft and became entangled in debris in a narrow cave, a Los Angeles Sheriff's Department spokesman said. A rescue diver pulled the body of the man from the well around 5:45 p.m. following a search-and-rescue mission that began after the victim's brother reported him missing around 1:20 p.m. Los Angeles County Sheriff's Lt.

It wasn't so much his considerable talent as a surfer, in waves large and small, that made Jay Moriarty one of the world's most popular wave-riders. It was his talent as a human being. That has been known for years by his many friends, by his wife and family, and even by casual acquaintances. Moriarty wore a smile wherever he went; he finished his sentences with a laugh and generally put those around him in a better mood.

Panic struck 60 feet down. A student in John Corso's scuba class had spit out her regulator. Survival instincts took over as she found herself unable to breathe. She bolted for the surface in a rush of adrenaline. Corso pursued. He tried to slow her ascent, mindful of what can happen when compressed air expands too fast in the body, like gas fizzing from a bottle of champagne. Two-thirds of the way up, it was Corso--not the student--who got slammed.