Divers Begin Removing Pier’s Broken Pilings

Chain saw in hand, Kurt Pitcher cuts through a 20-inch-thick vertical pole--underwater.

Twenty feet under water, to be precise.

Pitcher is one of two divers in a three-man crew that on Tuesday began removing 22 broken pilings from sections of the Ventura Pier that were destroyed during a December storm.

“The crew is taking advantage of the tail end of a storm,” said Tom Ulrich, operations manager of American Divers Inc., the firm hired by the city to do the $9,758 job. “It’s a window of opportunity between now and the weekend.”

The pilings, which extend between five and 28 feet above the ocean floor, are considered a hazard for boaters and jet skiers, and city officials decided to get rid of them. Over the next two days, the divers will cut the pilings and drag them to shore, where city workers will dispose of them.

The crew is working from a 30-foot boat about 300 feet from the end of the pier.

Decked out in a suit to keep him dry, Pitcher puts on a fiberglass helmet.

A thick hose--an “umbilical” in diver jargon--is attached to the helmet, which provides Pitcher with air and two-way communications with the boat.

Another umbilical feeds the hydraulic chain saw, which is powered from the boat.

Pitcher dives in, floats on the surface for a few minutes and disappears.

Earlier in the morning, the crew anchored a rope to the job site allowing the divers to go back and forth, Ulrich said.

The “down line” is also used to send equipment from the boat to the diver, he said.

Despite this week’s calm seas, the visibility is poor and the work hazardous, Ulrich said.

“We are just down from the Ventura River and it’s really murky,” he said.

Pitcher is underwater for about one hour.

When he returns to the surface, no pilings appear.

“Some pilings float,” Ulrich said. “The ones they cut today [Tuesday] are waterlogged and are on the bottom.”

Weather permitting, the crew will continue to cut the damaged pilings through Thursday afternoon.

They will tie them in bundles of three or five, depending on their length, and drag them to shore with the work boat.

Before losing more than 420 feet to a fierce storm on Dec. 13, the Ventura Pier was the longest wooden pier in California and one of the longest in the nation.

City officials are reviewing three options to fix the 123-year-old landmark. The options involve leaving the pier at its current length, restoring it to its original 1,958-foot length using storm-resistant materials, or rebuilding it to a length somewhere between the two.