Diving for the Dead - Searching the Lucinda for bodies in PNG
The Lihir Gold Mine is a large open pit mine in the middle what remains of the one of the volcano calderas that make up Niolam (Lihir) island. Lihir is located in a highly active seismic and geothermal area. Half of the caldera is missing, disappeared into the ocean several thousand years ago, brining the seashore right up to the edge of mining operations. If you add in 4000mm of rain each year and an unstable soil you get a less than ideal situation for landslides.
It was a combination of these and other unpredicted factors that resulted in a major landslip devastating 2km of shoreline, road, powerlines and water pipes. In hindsight it seemed obvious. When the road you drive on every day has lifted over a metre in the air in the last 2 months. When there are cracks in the ground you could hide a person in. When the water pipe is under repair on a weekly basis from being torn apart, it gives a few clues. It was the consensus opinion however that this consistent creeping would not fail catastrophically.
The consensus opinion was wrong.
A range of monitoring equipment had been installed across the unstable area to alert to any significant changes. Nearby stockpiles of ore were reduced in height, and alerts were given to the over 1000 staff who drove across the area at least twice each day.
At approximately 1:00am in the morning the alarms went off. The crews working on repairing the again ruptured pipeline 1.5m underground were evacuated. Equipment was left where it stood. Nothing happened. This had occurred before, and was believed to be another false alert. One of the geotechnical staff proceeded in to investigate the area and determine if the alerts were genuine.
They were.
At 2:30am 2KM of caldera slipped some 200m sideways. It doesn’t sound like much, the pictures and evidence on the ground showed otherwise. The small tsunami generated would certainly have some impact on the upcoming day.
My phone went off around 3am, partially waking me. Loud knocking on my door five minutes later certainly got my attention. A very rushed explanation and the the It & Comms teams were getting out of bed in a similar fashion. Communications would be critical to deal with the crisis. As would be expected, information was confused, contradictory and garbled. Luckily a crisis committee had been formed to deal with unexpected major events and the situation was managed as well as organized chaos can be.
Many components had to be stabilised. Powerlines had been cut, throwing the camp and town onto backup generator power. This was insufficient to run all services and had not been fully tested in years. Water pipes had been destroyed, shutting down the process plant near the mine indefinitely. Communications were critical to managing the disaster, and at significant risk due to power loss. My boss was off site on leave, giving me two roles to run between. Stabilizing this situation took most of the morning.
It eventually came down to 2 people confirmed missing. The geotechnician investigating the area when it slipped, and a member of a maintenance crew on one of the work-boats, a small tug - Lucinda.
I had launched my 17ft fibreglass boat early that morning to start ferrying equipment with my staff between the plant site and the camp. With the road destroyed the only alternate was a rough and slow three hour drive around the back of the island. Now the initial communications were stabilised, I assisted with the search for Lucinda. Back on land the search for the missing Geotech and his vehicle was already underway. My normal diving buddy was assisting there in a nightmare scene of unstable soil, tangled trees, wires and boiling mud.
Lucinda, a 45ft steel workboat or tug, had been moored about 3.5km(2nm) from the slip area. The amount of water displaced had formed a small tsunami and flipped her, most likely due to the manner in which she was moored. Various conflicting reports gave descriptions of where she went, and who was on her. It was 2:30am in the morning with no work crews directly on scene, so the confusion was understandable.
The search was being conducted with the environment department catamaran and it’s advanced side scan sonar, combined with dragging an anchor trying to catch something on the boat, so far, without success. Their sonar results so far had been confused.
I had a Navman Fish Finder, normally of marginal use in the frequently 3000m deep water around Lihir. Today it would be just fine. The harbour area tends between 10 and 40 metres, and all indications put her in the middle of the workboat maintenance bay. There was obvious oil or diesel on the muddy churned water, not surprising considering what had been washed from shore, but it did seem to concentrate in one area. Passing over this area at 4 knts, the Navman showed a lump on the bottom in one spot. Crossing the other way a few times showed it was a definite bottom feature in a single point - X marks the spot. I dropped anchor there. Calming the surface by stopping the other boats allowed us to see a steady stream of diesel floating to the surface about 10m from where I was moored - Bingo. Score one for the fish-finder.
Now to find some divers.
We knew that anyone on board would have drowned by now, but we needed to ascertain where the missing were. This would determine if further searches in other areas where necessary. By this stage it had been communicated that there two people on the boat when it flipped. One got out, one was missing. Their location on the boat was uncertain and variously reported and on deck, in the engine room working, in the wheelhouse, and below deck. Basically anywhere. We later found out that in typical PNG style the truth was somewhat different. These two people had decided to disappear from working nightshift and take a nap, the nearby boat offering an easy location. It would prove to be a deadly decision.
The chief electrical guy, Greg was the only one as crazy as myself to attempt a wreck dive in such poor visibility water. Barry, one of our to be support crew had done recovery work before, but approaching 70 and a heavy smoker, was not really up to it anymore. We each went and retrieved our own gear, not wanting the additional problems with unfamiliar and untested equipment in unknown conditions. A dozen tanks, dive lights, lines, compass and my spearfishing float were also on the list.
The plan on the surface was for the two of us to stay within sight but some 10m apart and plot a an initial square, and then swim a grid until we found her. No plan lasts the first 5 minutes of battle.
Hitting the water we steadily dropped to 15m, finding the visibility reducing from 2m to 0.5m as we went, before opening up to 2-3m at the bottom. The floor was mud, rubbish and scraps of vegetation washed in from the shore and slip with a steady fall away from shore. Splitting up would get us both lost, and Greg had the compass. I latched onto his tank and we headed east. 100 kicks. Nothing. Next south and uphill toward shore. 100 kicks. Nothing but intermittent rubbish and vegetation. Water about 8m deep. East - 50 Kicks, and something a little different. There was a small tree, still green and deep drag marks. Something had headed down slope here, probably more of the tree, but worth investigating. The marks were only about 100 - 200mm deep, but stood out in the smooth mud and fresh surface silt. The floor steadily dropped from 8m to 22m metres before a dark shape suddenly appeared in front of my face. At first I thought it was a scrap tyre, until I realized it was one of the fenders around Lucinda - Bingo.
I tied off the float so we could easily locate her again and we started to check her out. She was sitting on about a 30deg angle in 25m of water at the keel. The slope was only about 5deg, so she was buried to the rail on the port side, bow facing east. Bubbles were still trickling out of some areas, along with small streams of black engine oil, hydraulic fluid and diesel. The wheelhouse was the first place to check.
It was a sliding door facing toward the surface we approached first. I could see a yellow shape jammed against the window. I don’t remember being more freaked out than when I went to open that door. Thinking better of opening it straight up and getting a face full of things I didn’t want to think about, or wake up to for years to come, I signaled to Greg to pull the door open from the rear of it’s tracks. I would catch whatever floated out. Ready to go, he pulled.
The bright yellow lifejacket floated emptily to the surface, followed closely by a red fire extinguisher. As my pulse slowed I saw the wheelhouse was empty. Checking gauges for the amount of air gulped in the last minute, it was time to head up. I think Greg agreed.
We surfaced in a stinking thin layer of diesel on the surface, right beside the enviro cat. Barry was on the duckboard ready to help us with our gear, lit cigarette in hand. “Diesel won’t burn” he said…
The enviro guys had used another anchor to manoeuvre closer to the buoy and lifejacket that had popped up. At least we didn’t have far to swim.
A quick swap of tanks and equipment, check of computers for time etc and we were back in the water. It was only a quick dive to check out the externals and peer into all the hatchways. Check for the obvious. We found no bodies in any of the sections we could see into. The other wheelhouse door was smashed inwards from the water when she flipped and sank. That was the only obvious damage. Two pairs of boots in the wheelhouse seemed a little ominous. Bottom time was less than 10 minutes.
The next dive would be the interesting one, penetrating the machinery spaces and other below deck areas. On the surface we rigged up a single reg onto a tank with some weights to make it negatively buoyant. Greg and I took that down with us to do the penetration. We had earlier agreed that as I was younger and stupider I would go inside and he would watch from the entrance in case there were any problems. It be nice to have someone close to observe my entanglement and death. Lines would be more of a hindrance than a help with all the floating debris in the rooms, although with every kick disturbing silt, visibility would be poor to nil.
The entrance to the engine spaces was too small to enter with a tank and BC. This was why we had the extra tank. I dropped it through the hatch, hung onto the reg, ditched my BC and gear with Greg and swam in after the single tank. Dive light in one hand, tank in the other, and heart in mouth beating 10,000 times a minute I started the search.
Every movie I had ever seen involving drowned bodies was flashing through my head as I weaved the narrow gaps between pipes and floating cables. There were a large number of small spaces where a body could have been forced by in-rushing water and they all had to be checked in detail. The missing person was PNG national with typically dark skin, making the search in the poor visibility even more challenging.
After a slow and thorough lap around the huge engine that filled most of the space, I found nothing. Checking the steerage areas to the rear was the same. Last was the storage area under the wheelhouse. Again a narrow hatch was the only access, but here my penetration was limited by floating junk and containers. Upside down half through the hatch I could see the room was clear. Nothing. There was no-one left on the boat. All the movement had by now stirred up the silt to drop visibility to zero, a few times I couldn’t see my gauges in front of my mask. It was time to leave and let things settle.
The final dive of the day was with a bunch of rags. We jammed them hard into every vent hole leaking oil or diesel. The last thing we needed was 5000L of diesel spreading out over the bay. The leaks we saw previously were all from various minor vents as water displaced oil, so plugging the holes was effective with just some cloth.
It took another two months before Lucinda was re-floated. Last I saw she was still sitting on a stand beside the dock as they tried to sort out insurance. We later found as things cleared that the person that escaped alive was sleeping in the downstairs area below the wheelhouse. He crawled along the upside down ceiling and out the hatch through the wheelhouse to escape. His missing wontok was supposed to be sleeping in the wheelhouse, we assume he was washed out. His body was never found.
The process plant was out of operation for nearly three months. We commuted by daily by boat to work for a further 2 or 3 months after that. Extra emergency gensets were bought in to run the town until the powerlines could be restored, power was scarce in the meantime. We had to use helicopters to supply the primary communications tower with fuel for three months.
The two missing people were never found.
