CAF Story | Diving to Keep Our Coastal Waters Safe
Video / June 07, 2024
Transcript
When you get to go dive for explosives, bring them to the surface and then blow them up before dinner time, it's a good day.
Bell Island is a large island off of mainland Newfoundland, not far from St. John's.In this particular area, there were four civilian freighters that were repurposed with weaponry to cross the Atlantic with the convoys.
During World War II, that were sunk by German U-boats.
A lot of civilians and dive charters were diving in that area.
It wasn't safe because there was still conventional munitions on board.
Our tasking was to locate the munitions
remove them and dispose of them on shore.
I am Master Sailor Dekraker, Clearance Diver.
I am Master Sailor Brad Northrup, Clearance Diver here at Fleet Diving Unit (Atlantic).
What made this opportunity very memorable and exciting was the conditions were perfect for preservation of the wrecks.
When you can see a whole ship below you at 30 meters down, it is a very unique experience.
First order of business was to locate these explosives, we had a little bit of trouble locating it, there was some growth over the sides, the doors were rendered essentially invisible.
I was fortunate to dive with a friend.
We were the team that found it, and saw our prize inside, a stockpile of rounds.
The next problem to take care of is trying to get these items to the surface.
So when handling explosives, safety is obviously important, so we had to come up with some creative solutions to safely lift explosives.
We were pretty sure, based off of visual examination, that they were relatively safe to move.
But, even when something is pretty safe, you still want to take that level up and make sure you are as safe as possible.
We came up with a solution of using netting and lifting appliances, to bring all these items to the surface.
Once the rounds were brought up, we immediately put them back into a salt water tub, kept them wrapped in blankets that were completely soaked with salt water, to keep them close as we can to that environment they had been in all of those years.
We have a conventional munitions disposal truck, and that’s the vehicle we had in Newfoundland.
A police convoy shut down the highways while we were travelling, for safety reasons.
Once we got to the quarry, we would set them in the disposal pit, we’d used our C-4, all our disposal tools, tamping them down with a lot of sandbags to try to minimize any fragments that could come out of an explosion.
It’s pretty fun to press a button, hear a big boom, feel the wave go and hear the rain of rocks and debris falling out down and around you.
I was fortunate enough to remove the final round and to render it safe, transported it to the quarry and disposed of it there.
And it was a big highlight in my career, because we do a lot of training, it kind of brought the full picture into doing the actual job, and to do it domestically in our own backyard was a great experience.
It’s one of those jobs where you are doing everything that you wanted to do.
I knew I wanted to be a diver, because diving is fun, it is.
And blowing stuff up is fun.
So, when, when I had the opportunity to do a job that got to put both of those together, and you are just doing it for a couple of weeks, in great conditions, old St. John's, Newfoundland, it’s a good time.