Thirteen injured, four in the ICU, in an accident at the Navy diving center in Cartagena

Thirteen members of the Navy diving center in Cartagena have been injured to varying degrees in an accident that occurred this Wednesday in the hyperbaric complex of that institution. As this newspaper has learned, four of them are hospitalized in the ICU.

Hyperbaric chambers are used for divers to complete decompression processes.

The center is located at the La Algameca Naval Station, with a ship captain in command, and depends on the Admiralty for Maritime Action.

It has two fixed hyperbaric chambers, as many portable ones, boats, autonomous diving equipment and surface supplies, underwater tools, side-scan sonar and remotely operated vehicles, as well as an infirmary for hyperbaric pathologies.

The cameras were used in 2021 to treat a civil guard and in 2008 to two military divers injured during dives.

Among the recent missions of the center, with 56 years of history and a staff of 90 people, especially divers, the refloating in 2019 of the Turia minehunter stands out, which ran aground in the Mar Menor while searching for the remains of a plane from the San Javier General Air Academy that crashed in August in which Commander Francisco Marín died, and the recovery of his body and the fragments of that aircraft.

The following month, rescue divers from that center also participated in the same waters in the extraction of the bodies of Commander Daniel Melero and Ensign Rosa María and the remains of the crashed training plane in which they trained.

The center participates in the national maneuvers Cartago (submarine rescue and rescue), Marsec (maritime security) and Esp Divex (underwater intervention) and makes three annual deployments in its area of ​​responsibility for protection and recognition of submerged archaeological heritage, training in underwater repairs and diving in extreme conditions.