In Reply to: Re: Cooling water for power plants posted by Diver Z on February 22, 2008 at 11:56:35:

About 10 years ago a scuba diver got sucked in a cooling intake pipe at the El Segundo Hyperion Treatment plant next to LAX and survived. I remember the diver story on the paper was he thought he would be chopped up by some pump blades has he was traveling in the pipe for couple hundreds yards. He ended up in a large inclosed metal tank with air to breath. He bang on the tank for hours till a worker heard him and rescue him out. To ease divers about how the woman in Michigan and the man in El Segundo survived is I do have some background on treatment plants operation system. There are no pump needed for these intake pipes to suck in million of gallons each day, these are gravity feed pipes. Meaning the holding tank or reservoir is below the supplied water level, they just open up the gate valve and water will flow in till they have enough then they shut the valve. So you can be in front of the opening and thinking it safe and the next thing you get sucked in. The missing screen at the intake is a mystery, but then a diver can be pinned to the screen if the suction is strong enough. The diver at El Segundo incident ignored all the warning buoy markers near the intake.