Diver Dropped on Forest Fire
BAM925
I heard a story last summer that fire fighters in California stumbled
across a SCUBA diver in complete gear in the middle of a forest fire.
Aparently scooped up by a plane or helicopter making water runs to the
ocean. Has any one else heard this? What are the facts?
Dave Read
God. Please. Not again.
(for the uninitiated, this story is complete bullshit, an utter
hoax, and something which shows up on this newsgroup at least
once a month. For more info, go check out alt.folklore.urban.
And please, never ever ever ever ever bring up this thread on
rec.scuba again)
--
Dave Read, Ph.D. G O B R A V E S !
UT-Austin Heavy Ion Physics PDGA #9821
Physicist, programmer, diver, disc golfer, single malt enthusiast
DeepSix
Oh My god,
Is there are revolving door on this thread?
Actually, it turns out the diver was following a cave. He swam from the
ocean, to the end in the middle of the forest. When he surfaced, he saw
the approaching fire, but was too low on air to got back down.
He sizzled like a weiner.
Nothing left but a puddle of neoprene.
RE:> I heard a story last summer that fire fighters in California stumbled
> across a SCUBA diver in complete gear in the middle of a forest fire.
*********************************************************************
* Aerodynamics are for people who cannot build engines *
* -Enzo Ferrari *
* *
* Dean Trueman *
* Simon Fraser University Vancouver, B.C. *
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jfmezei
BAM925 wrote:
>
> I heard a story last summer that fire fighters in California stumbled
> across a SCUBA diver in complete gear in the middle of a forest fire.
> ocean. Has any one else heard this? What are the facts?
The facts are that the planes rarely use sea water and that they try to
use fresh water from calm lakes whenever possible. The sea is often too
rough for a plane to skim it to pick up water. Also, sea-water, being
heavier, is not as desirable as fresh water since a plane can't lift as
much water when it is salted.
Furthermore, for planes, the water intake is too small for a fire diver
to be scooped up, so fire divers usually go for the helicopter buckets.
Fire diving was very popular on the Internet last summer but with the
coming of winter and rains, is not very popular anymore. As for whether
fire diving is popular in real life or not, that is a totally different
question :-) :-) ;-) ;-) -) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) ;-)
jfmezei
DeepSix wrote:
> Actually, it turns out the diver was following a cave. He swam from the
> ocean, to the end in the middle of the forest. When he surfaced, he saw
> the approaching fire, but was too low on air to got back down.
>
> He sizzled like a weiner.
What about his buddy ? Spare air ? If they were cave diving, shoudn't
they have had proper backup and enough air for such a penetration dive
????
Diver2172
I just have one question. How many belived it the first time?
Only in California. What a great state!
Robert Wood
Diver2172 wrote:
>
> I just have one question. How many belived it the first time?
> Only in California. What a great state!
The firediver story is a classic urban myth.
I first heard of it years ago, while still in the Ukay
and way before I took up diving. It is is widely spread
and widely believed. I still hear it when
terrestrials (non-divers :) hear that I dive.
If people can believe pyramids were built by aliens,
then they can believe anything.
[\] Robert Wood
The St. Lawrence river - fresh, warm, visible diving.
mailto:rober...@mitel.com
Nigel Pond
Oh please please please DO NOT resurrect this thread!!!
--
The views expressed herein are the personal views of the writer and are
not to be considered endorsed in any way by E.I. du Pont de Nemours and
Company or any of its subsidiaries or affiliates.
Kurt Krueger
The local paper has a weird column they call "The Edge".
Recently they ran a bunch of riddles about situations and
the readers where challanged to figure out what happened.
One of the situations was a dead skin diver found in the middle
of a forest, miles from any water. ARRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!
I was expecting a renewal of fire diving posts. Fortunately
it didn't happen (this was about a month ago). But now,
here we go again.
(sigh)
Terry Lee May
Here's an archive report of investigations concerning the elusive
diver found dead in forest fire thread... The first clip is the
original request, the second is the investigation findings.
<begin encription decode here>[1.2/12/23/96/keycom.003445.2]
------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 1996/05/25
Message-Id: <4p0r99$k...@newsbf02.news.aol.com>
Sender: ro...@newsbf02.news.aol.com
References: <4ou37c$q...@mark.ucdavis.edu>
Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364)
Newsgroups: rec.scuba,alt.folklore
In article <4ou37c$q...@mark.ucdavis.edu>, ez06...@dale.ucdavis.edu
(Timothy O'Donnell) writes:
>A fiend of mint told me about this. His friend
>works for a hospital investigating unexplained deaths. He was put into
>action when a diver (in full gear) was found dead at the top of a tree
>after a major fire in the area. The only explaination they could come
>up with is that a fire pkane scooped him up while diving and dropped
>him into the fire. Ask Chris Morris at the southern California
>rollerblade offices (in L.A.)
After following this thread for the last couple of years, my passive
activity on this topic as now turned into a professional quest.
Isn't it amazing what some office person at the Southern California
RollerBlade office can confirm that Associated Press and other
creditable news gathering organizations cannot. Usually, when a death
of such strange circumstances is reported, AP will be on it in a flash
and stay on it until all the facts are publicly proofed out. No such
story has crossed my AP or CNN wires within the last year.
Which hospital? What town? Who is this friends friend? What was the
hospitals death incident reference number (D.I.R.)?
Two Saturdays ago, the local FOX news affilliate did report the same
urban legend darn near word for word as it has been passed on over the
years. No other news program on TV reported the story in the the LA
market that day. However, that following Monday, a local zoo-syle
morning radio program did make mention of the FOX affil story and to
the fact that they did report the event believing it as being true.
You have to kinda wonder about such a report when it tags off with the
line "... somehere in Northern California, a diver was found..." with
no mention of the fire area he was found in or a sound bite or quote
from a rep of an investigating agency, such as the CDF.
It makes for good yuks when TV news has egg on it's face. Sounds like
a somewhat in-experienced weekend assignment desk editor received a
call from someone asking about the urban myth. The editor may have
just taken the bad information passed onto him/her and reported it.
Tried to get a confirmation from the local representatives of
California Dept of Forestry, the main operators of the flying scoop
planes and helicopters (less their contractors), as to what was found.
The CDF Media Relations and CDF Net Operations Officers on duty at that
time both chuckled at our inquiry for even asking about the "event" and
that it has never happened according to their records and recent
knowledge. Also contacted the State of California Fire Marshall's
office in Covina, CA only to receive the same chuckles.
If the death did occur, I would like to talk to the agency that is
investigating the "death" and get a sound bite or quote from them. Only
if I can find this agency's doccumentation creditable will I believe it
actually happened. I also have overseas clients that would like to
get the story confirmed for their own news programming.
And yes, I tried to contact "...Chris Morris at the southern California
rollerblade offices (in L.A.)". There is no phone listing for any such
organization in the 213, 310, 818, 805, 714, 619 and 909 area codes.
Can someone else turn me onto their phone number? I really want to talk
to this Chris Morris.
T.MAY
PADI, NAUI, BS-AC and soon IANTD too.
LA SAT TECH/KEYSTONE Facility Director
------------------------------------------------------------
<end encription decode here>
<begin encription decode here>[2.2/12/23/96/keycom.003449.1]
------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: Forest Fire Death - A "Dead" Issue
From: tle...@aol.com (TLeeMay)
Date: 1996/06/11
Message-Id: <4pkn4q$n...@newsbf02.news.aol.com>
Sender: ro...@newsbf02.news.aol.com
References: <31BD53...@aol.com>
Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364)
Newsgroups: rec.scuba,alt.folklore
Well, it's been more than two weeks since I first requested doccumented
info from any creditable news agency or government run department on
the facts pertaining to the alleged deaths over the years involving a
scuba diver being dropped onto a forest fire ... blah blah blah.
I checked with Reuters NY, AP, CNN, EBU, TF1 France, RTL Germany and TV
Global in Brasil. No one can confirm through agencies like local
rescue or fire fighter organizations or even hospitals/morgues that
such events ever happened. They all have, however, heard the "myths".
People on the various newsgroups that say they either know first hand
or know a friend of a friend who knows, but they have not come forward
to give more detailing facts like the exact area, the investigating
agency, the D.I.R. number (for those who work in the hospital/morgues)
or even the diver's factoids. When last counted, there were 9
newsgroups or mailing lists that were discussing the "deaths".
I even got a piece of mail from someone representating themselves as a
NASDS officer wanting to know what the results of the search were so
that they can quall the questions they have been getting (Raymond call
me, you have my phone number). I can't verify the individual from
NASDS as being who he said he was, his return address is bogus.
The closest thing I was able to seek out as to someone who actually
said they saw the diver dead & burned with his wetsuit on was a French
woman living in the Netherlands. She wrote in a letter she found the
body on the side of a hill after a fire ravenged the area. She wrote
the letter in April 1989 as an April fools joke to her American friend
livng in France who was currently taking open water instruction at that
time. Her friend took the letter as being real and advised an english
language newspaper catering to Americans at that time. Needless to
say, the newspaper thought the story was real too and re-printed it.
That's as far back as I was able to properly doccument the beginning of
this mis-nomer. I should have known better since neither Hard Copy,
Inside Edition, or Day & Date caught wind of and aired the story.
I guess I gotta tell Australia Net10 and CTN China the story is truly
false. Back down the DVC Pros mates.
So, how was your last 15 days?
T.MAY
PADI, NAUI, BSAC and soon IANTD.
LA SAT TECH/KEYSTONE Facility Director
------------------------------------------------------------
<end encription decode here>
After this session, I also inquired with the BBC and RTL Germany as to
their confirmation that such a real story exists. Both agencies
dismissed the rumor.
T.MAY
LA SAT TECH/KEYSTONE Facility Director
www.keystonecom.com
www.netcom.com/~tleemay/
jfmezei
> Diver2172 wrote:
> >
> > I just have one question. How many belived it the first time?
> > Only in California. What a great state!
Heck, there is even a WEB site that fully documents FIRE DIVING !!!
If there is a web site, it *MUST* be true ????? Right ?????
Secondly, while many say that fire diving is an urban myth because
of lack of evidence, how come Jesus Christ isn't an urban myth too ?
Personally, I think that FIRE DIVING may have some roots in reality.
Perhaps at one point, a plane had problems skimming a lake because there
were diving flags blocking its path and have do to sepcial maneovers to
avoid them, and the pilots perhaps made a joke over the air to the
fire marshall about the possibility of them having scooped up some
scuba divers and to tell the fire fighting crews on the ground to be
on the lookout for scuba divers... and this may have made the rounds
and became "FACT" rather than "JOKE"....
Nevertheless, now that this has evolved into a FACT (complete with
its web site), we should take FIRE DIVING seriously.
btru...@ark.com
Diver2172
"could be aleins were trying to hide the evidence" offered my neighbor.
maybe insted of asking the Roller Blade Dept.the person investigaiting
this myth should contact the Air Force. I did not save his name.