On the day that two Navy divers drowned at Aberdeen Proving Ground's Super Pond facility, nearly everything that could go wrong did.
“Everything we train for – I can’t say why it happened, it just happened. One thing after another after another," Petty Officer 1st Class Fernando Almazon said in testimony Wednesday, according to The Virginian-Pilot.
Navy Diver 1st Class James Reyher of Caldwell, OH, and Navy Diver 2nd Class Ryan Harris of Gladstone, MO died in the Super Pond in February. Cmdr. Michael Runkle was relieved of duty in May.
Wednesday marked the start of an Article 32 hearing in Norfolk, VA against Chief Warrant Officer 3 Mark Smith and Senior Chief Petty Officer James Burger. Both men could be charged with involuntary manslaughter and dereliction of duty for their roles in the deaths, according to the Virginian-Pilot report.
An Article 32 hearing is similar to a grand jury. The presiding officer will decide if a court-martial or other disciplinary proceeding will go forward.
Almazon, who supervised the dive testified that Reyher and Harris were supposed to the bottom of the pond to find a helicopter. After four minutes, when they should have returned, the two did not surface. It was 24 minutes before the two men were removed from the water and both were unresponsive, The Navy Times reports.
Almazon also testified that equipment, including rebreathers, malfunctioned, leading them to use direct air hoses. Diving lines had tangled, and visibility was just down to a couple of feet, The Baltimore Sun reports.
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