The death of an 18-year-old on his first scuba dive has led to the biggest workplace fine in the history of the US state of Minnesota – amounting to more than US $730,000 (£576,000).
Joe Anderson died on 21 May while diving to clean weeds from Lac Lavon, an angling lake in Apple Valley, for Your Lake Aquatic Plant Management, a company from Columbia Heights. The fatal incident was reported on Divernet in June.
A student at Bethel University with plans to study business in Arizona later in the year, Anderson was working over his summer holidays alongside five other Your Lake employees.
He had been sent to clear weeds and other litter at depths of 3-5m but when the other divers surfaced they realised that his exhaust bubbles could not be seen and went to find out what had happened, according to an investigation report by Minnesota Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA).
Anderson was found with his regulator mouthpiece out, lying unresponsive on the lakebed. He was brought up with what appeared to be severe hypothermia and resuscitated, but died in hospital three days later.
It transpired that Anderson had never dived with scuba equipment before. According to OSHA he had received only 10-15 minutes of training from another employee, who had not been scuba-certified.
OSHA’s investigation concluded that Your Lake employees lacked the appropriate experience or training to perform their work safely, and had not been trained in emergency response procedures such as CPR or other first aid. The company had no safe-practices manual, and no supervisor of diving operations had been on hand when the incident occurred.
Your Lake has now been cited by OSHA with five “wilful” violations of commercial diving safety standards, a category reserved for cases in which a company is alleged to be aware that hazardous conditions prevail but makes no reasonable efforts to eliminate them.
Three of the violations were each for the maximum amount of $161,323, the other two for $123,200 each. The company is contesting the citations.
Dakota County Sheriff's office is still carrying out a criminal investigation alongside the county attorney’s office.
According to the Minnesota Star Tribune, Anderson was the second Minnesota worker in two years to die while scuba diving to remove underwater weeds. An employee of a company called Dive Guys of Wayzata drowned in June 2022 while working in Lake Minnetonka and the company was given five citations, two of them for wilful violations, though the $180,850 overall fine was reduced on appeal.
Also on Divernet: CCR SCOOTER DIVERS WERE SUCKED INTO DAM INLET, DIVER SUCKED INTO DAM-PIPE: OPERATOR SETTLES, GOLFBALLS WERE ATTACHED TO DIVER’S WEIGHTBELT, ALLIGATOR GRABS GOLFBALL DIVER
