This CO2 Scrubber Killed Half the Crew

That fan is the smell he had earlier, a fan normally gets an electrical smell before it fails. What they did wrong, They did not abort the mission the second they smelled an electrical problem

I'm a commercial diver who's been following you for a couple of years. I don't often say anything but I appreciate what you do and I always give your videos a like. In particular, if you don't know certain details like in this video, you say so. That's honesty and I appreciate that. Your admissions that you don't know every detail inspires trust, not mistrust. Keep up the great work.👍 The thorough dissection you've done of the events in this tragedy is top-shelf. Your channel is a useful learning resource for anyone working underwater at + 1 atmospheric pressure. There are things to be learned on your channel, even by an old veteran like myself.

In 1985, I declined a very generous offer of employment as an underwater pipe welder. I talked to several people that told me horror stories from their time in that field. The pay, although quite substantial, was not enough for me. I nearly died several times during large land based pipe jobs. I later decided to join the U.S. Navy. I think I made the right decision. RIP to all those lost.

I'm not going on a sub that's covered in hooks, and cables, and loops of steel like a damn giant piece of velcro to wreck site.

In my diving days we called that style of clip a "suicide hook".

Trapped in a cage of metal slowly suffocating must be so demoralizing knowing you can’t really do anything about it other than wait and try and stay conscious while rescuers struggle to reach you in the depths

Never skip repairs, always have a backup system/plan. And if a more experienced crew member says grab a jacket/food/whatever, DO IT! So many of these incidents could be avoided, or not as severe, if people took logical precautions.

I myself almost killed a crew of three, while they were going into a deep dive down to 6000-feet, but had to abort at about 2000-feet. I had designed an underwater lamp/light controller, to allow dimming of 1000watt lamps, since they were too bright in many undersea applications. Unfortunately, the controller box was placed directly under an oil pressure line, which was leaking an dripping hydraulic fluid onto the box. The oil hit a couple of electrical components, reduced their heat transfer capacity, and resulted in hydraulic fluid being burned and vaporized. The crew thought they had an internal fire, donned breather masks, and emergency surfaced. Nonetheless, it took them 20+minutes to surface and get fresh air into this submersible. Had they been down at maximum depths, they probably would have run out of breathable air. The investigation cleared me, but the vehicle was rebuilt, to allow a full rise from 6000+feet, with full additional air/mix, and without heaters working, if electrical power was lost...

It amazes me just how many people disregard procedures for safety - especially when the procedure is meant to save lives.

I’m beginning to think that professional diving is a dangerous business.

There is a reason why safety protocols exist. They are for your safety. If you disregard them you effectively sign away your life in the event of an accident. Good job 👏

A smell of burning while underwater and with a faulty fan speaks of immediate danger! They should have mentioned the smell of burning, so the rescue team react with priority!

How come every single underwater rescue is plagued with crap not working on the rescue equipment.

I don't think the scrubber killed them. Seems like time is what killed them. They had no plan or way to survive for being at that depth for that amount of time. Also it was never clear why the men were in the diving compartment in the first place. Was there any purpose for them going down along with the 2 pilots?

So compancy and huburis killed them. The fan not working should have prompted a repair so you have 2 fans that way if that one failed you wouldn't be screwed. Two fan systems like this are NOT that complex if the men were able to open the panel locate the problem and even cobble together a replacement by using the scrubber material in front of the AC unit. They should have kept a few extra fans in a storage bin so they could hot swap the broken one out. Second this sub has a design flaw, there's no heater unit. They died because temps fell too low for the scrubbers to work, they should have had a small space heater or some type of heating unit onboard for this occasion lastly The divers were complacent and got themselves killed by NOT wearing their dive gear and only went in with t-shirts and shorts wtf? that was stupid. They'd be alive if they didn't do such a stupid thing because when pressed about diving they could have gotten out of the sub and used their hand tools to free the ship OR use the oxygen tanks attached to their suits to slowly surface themselves. Let this be a lesson to everyone that does a dangerous job that requires you wear PPE ALWAYS WEAR IT better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it. If they brought their suits they'd be alive right now

I have watched every video of yours, and for some reason, this one felt hard to watch. From the 'eh' of overlooking the broken scrubber, to the 'suicide hook', to the many failed rescue attempts. Just heartbreaking for the two gents in the dive compartment.

After watching the rest of the video, I'm struck at how many times the rescue attempts were aborted when, if the initial dive was aborted in the first place, everyone could have survived.

from what he says, I'd say it wasn't the CO2 scrubber that killed anyone. The broken scrubber fan was in the cockpit and they survived fine by basically pulling a bit of an apollo 13 with the scrubber media. If anything, the "passengers" died because their compartment was aluminum and got too cold for the scrubber material to work properly. They were also dressed improperly (despite being warned) and refused to attempt to exit the sub and try to remedy the problem even when their own compartment was at equal pressure for the depth and would have afforded them no extra risk by that point. We all get lax with things we've done a bunch of times, and it was this laxness by the two in the rear chamber (because they weren't planning to dive) that ultimately sealed their fate.

Your in a submersible you smell something electrical burning you go up, period full stop straight up as quickly as you safely can

It's click-bait-ish to say "this CO2 scrubber killed these men". The scrubber worked exactly ss designed. The CO2 absorber material worked exactly as expected. The air temp dropped more than predicted, faster than predicted, and nobody thought of a way to warm the CO2 absorbent THAT'S what killed everyone.