They dove with the same amount of air as the first team, and without a safety line or communications. After they failed to return, a third team of divers was sent in to pull them out from the tunnel. The preceeding rescue divers, like the first two divers, had tragically run out of air and perished. These deaths have brought to light questions about the district's hiring of recreational scuba divers to perform commercial work and the divers' lack of commercial diving training. Questions have also surfaced about safety practices.
Recreational divers continue to be hired for work which they are unqualified to perform.
Some contracts or bid requests simply stipulate that the worker must be a certified diver. The training and certification a recreational diver obtains differs greatly from the hundreds of training hours a commercial diver receives. Three recreational dive training agencies, PADI, NAUI, and YMCA, clearly maintain that diving certification under their auspices should not be considered adequate training for underwater commercial work. Even more troubling is the fact that the divers failed to follow safety regulations, and it cost them their lives. Neither the divers sent down to do the work nor the rescue divers were tethered to another dive team member on the surface.