MeatCanyon

I had been within arm's reach when the wall of sand hit us, but now even feeling around under the sand revealed no trace of them.

The next incident occurred during a humanitarian job that we volunteered to perform.

After a portion of bridge collapsed over 50 foot deep ocean waters, we volunteered to recover the vehicles and hopefully the bodies.

By the time we arrived on scene, the collapse had taken place just over a week ago.

We spent the first day surveying the area and developing a plan to lift the most we could in the week timeframe we had available.

By the start of day two, we were actively pulling vehicles off the bottom.

It was a difficult job to say the least, but not because of the effort required.

The state of disarray in the cars was heartbreaking.

These weren't military pilots or sailors lost at sea.

These were families on vacation or people commuting to work.

It was hard to say what was harder.

The cars where we found an entire family with the parents' seatbelts unbuckled and them in the backseat having been trying to unbuckle their children were the cars where the parents got out.

leaving the children buckled in the backseat.

I tried not to imagine the panic that had been going on inside the cars as they flooded from broken windshields or windows as people frantically tried to escape, but I couldn't forgive those that left their families to drown.

Each day, we moved on to a new section of cars, and on the fourth day, we started noticing several of the cars had their doors open and nobody inside.

We were happy to find easier work, especially under the assumption that the tragedy had been lessened by people escaping the wrecks.

It is until I began rigging a minivan for removal.

The family inside hadn't been so lucky.

As I ran slings through the van and prepared it to be lifted, I noticed the other diver inspecting the rigging gear.

He began undoing one of my shackles.