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Langkampfen - recovery dive
Phillip and me were called on January 6th and 12th for a recovery dive together with other divers from the „Österrreichische Wasser Rettung“, section Innsbruck 1 (where we belong to) and section Kufstein.
The job was to dive in the river Inn, just above the power station of Langkampfen and to search for a drillhead and, if possible, to bring this drillhead to the surface. This drillhead was lost by a dutch company, who was excavating the riverbed in front of the powerstation. Somehow they managed to break the solid connection between the drillhead and mounted tube to the surface. The lost piece had a weight of about 500 kg, with the drillhead itself, having a diameter of about 70 cm in front, a hydraulic motor and a tube with a diameter of about 30 cm and 3 m length. This tube was broken and stuck in the riverbed at a depth of about 13 m, totally coverd with gravel and mud. Due to this, we couldn´t fix any liftbags, nor would it have been useful.
At least we could bring the hydraulic hoses and steel cables to the surface, which were used to power and maneuver the drillhead. The dutch company tried to get the drillhead free by runnig the system and pulling at the steel cables. After that had no success, we were called again for January 12th to check the situation.
Although it was a bit better, it was still impossible to lift it with liftbags, because still only about 50cm of the tube were out of the gravel and the rest (drillhead and hydraulic motor) was still stuck in the riverbed. We fixed another steel cable, for a recovery from the riverbank. We took some pictures as well, but due to the bad visibility, the quality was bad enough. With that, our job was done. We didn´t get any information, weather the company has any success with the recovery of the drillhead from the riverbed.