Diver Recovers From ‘The Bends’

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31322, 18 March 1967, Page 1

Diver Recovers From ‘The Bends’

(N.Z. Press Association) AUCKLAND, Mar. 17. After spending nearly 20 hours in a decompression chamber at the Devonport naval base, a Nelson skin-diver emerged this afternoon quite recovered from an attack of “the bends.” The diver. Richard John Ralfe, aged 30, married, a commercial artist, of Stoke, was admitted to the naval hospital for observation. Mr Ralfe suffered “the

bends”—the caisson disease dreaded by all divers—during a salvage expedition near Nelson on Tuesday afternoon. The decompression chamber at the naval base was the only one in the country in which he could recover, he said. On Thursday he was flown to Auckland by a special charter aircraft. With Able Seaman K. McKnight for company, he was placed in the chamber about 118.30 p.m. They played cards ■ and dice, and talked to help > pass the time. I Mr Ralfe, who has been diving for 13 years, said he ■ would dive again but he did

not know exactly when. Members of the Navy diving school worked in shifts to supervise the decompression. Lieutenant-Commander T. H. Wickman, head of the school, said the decompression was the longest performed in the country since the machine was acquired in 1957. The previous record was seven hours and a half.

An appeal for a second decompression chamber in New Zealand was made today by an official of the Underwater Association. The association’s chief instructor, Dr. M. Taylor, of Nelson, said that the incident emphasised the need for the

Navy’s chamber in Auckland to be supplemented. “In the event of an accident, it is necessary to fly the diver to Auckland, or have a portable chamber, also owned by the Navy, flown to the scene of the accident," he said. A second decompression chamber was under construction at Gracefield, Lower Hutt, but the Ministry of Works was not expected to complete work on it for some time.

Dr. Taylor urged that the work should be speeded, with a view to avoiding the necessity for costly air ambulance flights to Auckland.