DALLAS, Texas (6 Apr 2009) — The body of the Dallas diver who drowned Thursday in a privately owned lake near Garrison was recovered Friday evening, following a two-day recovery effort that utilized the services of more than 30 individuals. Larry Coach, 64, who operated a Dallas diving business, had been contracted to clear debris from the lake drainpipe on Thursday, when he is believed to have drowned. Rescuers on Friday picked up where they had left off the night before, making numerous attempts to remove Coach's body, which appeared to have been somehow attached to an unknown object in the water. A Nacogdoches Dive Team Tom Bush was eventually able to remove Coach from his diving vest and bring him to the surface late Friday, where he was brought onshore and then taken to a local funeral home. "The tank and the BC (buoyancy compensator) is where he was hung up," Bush said Friday, after emerging from the lake. The continuing recovery efforts on Friday began around 9 a.m. with teams working to remove the bars of a metal grate that had covered the drainpipe Coach was believed to be working on. "The grate has a structure on it to keep logs and things from going down the pipe that hinders our recovery," rescue diver Stanley Jones said around 2 p.m., adding that recovery teams were working to remove grate bars that were obstructing recovery efforts, and then to close off the excess water flow on the opposite side of the pipe so that water pressure would be pushed back through and out into lake, releasing Couch's body. In order to close the overflow end of the pipe, rescue workers and numerous volunteers placed an air bag inside the end of the pipe, and then added a steel plate that Drewery Construction had made to cover the end of it. As workers attempted to fill the bag with air, a pinning blew off and the bag deflated. The process was attempted again with success, and almost immediately a bubbling could be seen from the lake. Divers and members of the Nacogdoches Fire Department's Swift Water Rescue team got into two rescue boats, and using a long hook, attempted to extract Coach's body from the water. | | "It's ripping up the wet suit every time we pull," one diver said, before Bush suited up and got into the water. He located Coach's body and tied a rope around his leg, signaling to the divers in the boats to pull up. "There's all kinds of debris around him," Bush said, after coming back up. And, following several additional attempts to free Coach's body and two air tanks, Bush removed Coach's diving vest, and the body, that had been head down in the water, floated to the surface. Coach's family was notified by Dallas police of the situation Thursday night, and in a telephone interview from her Dallas home shortly after noon Friday, Coach's relative, Brenda Coach, said that the family was doing "OK," but that they were still awaiting a response. "I have not spoken to anyone," she said. "I'm still waiting for word that his body has been recovered." by MICHELE MARCOTTE |
