Author Topic: ‘Quite the eerie feeling’: Navy divers complete search for remains in Lahaina Harbor  (Read 324 times)

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Offline rangerrebew

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‘Quite the eerie feeling’: Navy divers complete search for remains in Lahaina Harbor
The Pentagon’s task force is now distributing fuel and potable water in Maui.
JENNIFER HLAD | AUGUST 29, 2023 10:46 PM ET
 
   
HONOLULU, Hawaii—Navy divers have surveyed the bottom of Lahaina Harbor and finished a “very thorough” but non-invasive underwater search for remains in the continuing response to the Maui wildfires.

A team of 21 Pearl Harbor-based divers arrived in Maui last week and immediately began underwater mapping and survey operations at the request of the Maui Fire Department, Senior Chief Jeremy Kilchenstein told Defense One.

Kilchenstein, a master diver with Mobile Diving and Salvage Unit 1, said Maui firefighters had done “a quick sweep of the harbor and determined that the bottom, due to wreckage and debris, was a little more technical that they were aware of at first,” so they asked the Navy divers to help.

The underwater surveys included sonar mapping and video documentation. Petty Officer 2nd Class Sephten Clevenger said the situation in the harbor is very complex, with about 20 partially intact vessels between 10 and 35 feet long, sunk mainly along the edges.

https://www.defenseone.com/policy/2023/08/quite-eerie-feeling-navy-divers-complete-search-remains-lahaina-harbor/389855/
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Offline Smokin Joe

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It has been three weeks. Just from my time as a fireman in brackish water tidewater environments, the usual summer time to float a human body (decay gases build up and add buoyancy) is 3 to 5 days. Depending on the estuary, some places are more likely for those bodies to be found. Some never are, but often they are either on shore or close. Most notably, William Colby's body was found just a few days after his disappearance, just about 300 yards from where a (former SEAL) friend predicted, within a day of his prediction. I am familiar with the waters where Colby's body was found, and grew up on that river. He was hardly the first to be found in that area, the currents and shoreline seem to collect bodies.

My point, though, is that victims of the fire who drowned are likely to be mostly intact in the torso, and should have floated away on the local currents. Some may have been trapped by debris, but I would expect from accounts only a few, at most will be found.

The time to look was two to two and a half weeks ago, on the beaches, any inlets, tide pools and up in rocks, and out in the nearshore water, provided local scavengers hadn't degraded the integrity of the remains.

I hope I am wrong, and that many more families are provided with answers, but find it unlikely that badly burned human remains would end up in the harbor without help. You don't burn neck deep in water. If you are burned to the point of being unrecognizable, you aren't likely to be going anywhere much.
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Seventeen Techniques for Truth Suppression

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

C S Lewis