The Indonesian government is preparing to deploy a team of highly specialist divers to improve the chances of locating more bodies around the crash site of AirAsia flight QZ8501.
At Kumai Port in Central Kalimantan 10 from the specialist diving team known as SAR are poised to head out to sea, assisted by crews from the country's search and rescue agency BASARNAS.
Diving teams are performing one of the most important roles of this operation. Every day they are being sent down into the murky waters to try and find any debris, bodies or even the the black box.
It is an arduous task and they are being hampered by severe weather conditions – strong waves and heavy underwater currents.
Rendra Hertiadhi is the team's field commander and has 30 years of diving experience.
“Our job is to dive and recover bodies from the fuselage of the aircraft if it is found and also to retrieve whatever instrument like the flight data recorder if it happened that we found it near the bodies," he said.
“We have to release (the bodies) from whatever is trapping them, we put them in the body bags, tied to a shoot line then float them to the surface where on the surface our guys on the boat will recover the bags and bring them to shore."
The dive teams are severely affected by currents, waves and wind.
The team said if the underwater current is less than five knots it is still safe for them to go down. It requires technical and tactical expertise. Recreational divers cannot generally dive in currents stronger than two knots.
Reinhart Thamrin is a Disaster & Conflict specialist and explained that her team deployed in just 12 hours.
"We have a passion for diving and we are willing to help," she said. "The government calls us and we come."
The team will operate for seven to 10 days before being replaced by their 'beta team'.
Saturday 10 January 2015
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/specialreports/qz8501/search/qz8501-death-divers-on/1579982.html
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