“Missing diver in Lake Attersee” – this message on the fire brigade’s website usually does not bode well. On Saturday, a total of eight teams were alerted shortly before noon because one of two divers had been reported missing. The result was a large-scale operation by fire brigades, water rescue services, the Red Cross and the police. But the supposedly missing person turned up a short time later. He and his partner had lost sight of each other and had not complied with a diving rule, as the head of diving base 4, Thomas Manahl, said in an interview with the OÖ Nachrichten. He describes the incident.
“The two men from Austria wanted to cover a longer distance at a depth of around 15 meters and then dive to around 40 to 60 meters. At a depth of 15 meters, the two lost sight of each other.” However, there was a communication problem: “There is a diving rule that says you should surface immediately if you lose sight of each other. But that wasn’t done here, one diver looked for the other but couldn’t find it,” says Thomas Manahl. Only relatively late did one of the two dive up and set the rescue chain in motion. “And then the missing person suddenly appeared again and we were able to break off the mission,” said the diving center manager. Both divers survived the incident unharmed.
However, the rescue operation was quite complex for the helpers, since rescue divers from all four diving groups in Upper Austria had been ordered to the site – including from St. Peter am Hart in the Braunau district. “But they found out during the journey that the operation was no longer necessary,” says Manahl.
Source: Nachrichten
