Aug 28, 2002 14:10
Fire authorities in California found a corpse in a burned-out section of forest while assessing the damage done by a forest fire. The deceased male was dressed in a full wet suit, complete with scuba tanks on his back, flippers, and facemask. A post-mortem revealed that the person died not from burns, but from massive internal injuries. Dental records
provided a positive identification. Investigators then set about to determine how a fully clad diver ended up in the middle of a forest fire.
It was revealed that on the day of the fire, the person went for a diving trip off the coast some 20 miles from the forest. The fire fighters, seeking to control the fire as quickly as possible, called in a fleet of helicopters with very large dip buckets. Water was dipped from the ocean and then flown to the forest fire and emptied. You guessed it. One minute our diver was
making like Flipper in the Pacific, the next he was doing the breast stroke in a fire dip bucket 300 feet in the air. Some days it just doesn't pay to get out of bed.