Divers fight fear, darkness to find bodies

Divers fight fear, darkness in search for bodies

JINDO, South Korea — Divers grope their way slowly through the dark corridors and cabins of the sunken Sewol ferry. Bodies appear suddenly, floating by in the murky water, buoyed by life-jackets or the bloat of decomposition, their faces etched with fear or shock.

At times, heavy sediment in the water can make flashlights useless and it is almost total darkness inside the South Korean ferry, which has flipped upside down on the seafloor. Divers must stretch their hands into the void to search for bodies. There’s constant worry their lifeline to the surface, a 300-foot oxygen hose, will get snagged or cut as they swim deeper through the wreck’s maze-like hallways.

For nearly a week now, dozens of divers have battled fast currents and cold waters — as well as exhaustion and fear — to pull out a steady stream of corpses. As they go deeper into what’s become a huge underwater tomb, they’re getting a glimpse of the ship’s final moments April 16 before it capsized. More than 300 — most of them high school students — are feared dead.

“They can see the people’s expressions at the instant” the ship sank, Hwang Dae-sik said of the team of 30 divers he supervises for the Marine Rescue and Salvage Association, a private group of professional divers who’ve joined Korean navy and coast guard divers in the search and rescue effort.

Divers descend about 100 feet down and enter the ship through windows they’ve broken with hammers.

Hwang says divers take special care with decaying bodies to make sure they don’t damage them further. When a body without a life jacket is found one diver wraps his arms around the body and another diver pulls his colleague and the body to the surface with a rope.

Hwang said his divers try to avoid looking at the eyes of the bodies they retrieve to minimize the shock. It’s not always possible. “Even though they have a lot of diving experience, they get really frightened when they first face the bodies,” he said.

Many of the students are found hugging each other.

The Associated Press