Dispatches from the Grave

By Steve Lopez/Peggy''s Cove

There was no way to prepare for the first dive, no experience to lean on. Rene Poirier said a Hail Mary; that was his preparation. And then Poirier, a 36-year-old master seaman in the Canadian Navy, descended into the wreckage of Swissair Flight 111 off the coast of Nova Scotia.

His grandfather had been a diver in bridge construction and told stories that hypnotized young Rene. He would have his own story now. Tethered to his 88-ft. boat and wearing 100 lbs. of equipment, he dropped slowly into the grave: 50 ft., 100, 150. At 180 ft., he was on the ocean floor with about 25 ft. of visibility, standing in the horror.

In every direction, nothing but tiny pieces of debris. The jet lay unrecognizable, "like a huge pane of shattered glass." And scattered among the shards were the people he had come for. He found an eye, a heart, a jawbone. Part of a hand embedded in an armrest. Poirier tries the word hellish to describe the scene, then takes it back.

"There is no way to describe it."

Sharks cruised by, grays and makos, and cash floated up from the depths. He saw a $1,000 U.S. bill riding a current, absurdly intact, the slow-motion tumble of a dream that makes no sense. Two hundred twenty-nine people had plunged from the sky in unthinkable terror, instant death their only mercy.

Poirier stepped lightly, with a sense of duty and respect, knowing that he and about 200 other divers were the best hope of determining what downed the Boeing MD-11. A clue may lie hidden in that nautical square mile of disintegration. Poirier hopes they may also recover enough of what it takes to offer some families "the luxury of a burial."

He supervises a crew of 14, who dive in pairs, carrying mesh bags 2 ft. by 3 ft. "When the first bag came up, everyone had to look at it because we had to know who could handle it and who couldn't."

They looked. No one spoke. All but one would dive again.

"Fortunately it's dangerous work and you need total concentration, so there isn't much time to think about it. At night, you're too tired to do anything but sleep. But I'm a human being. I'm not unaware."

It takes hours and assistance from the entire crew, to get two divers down for about 35 minutes and back up. The divers are connected to the boat with hoses, and video cameras attached to their helmets relay what they see. When a diver finds something, it is too dangerous to kneel and retrieve it because the jet is now a field of razor blades. One diver holds the other by the back of his suit and eases him down.

Poirier, on one of his dives, picked up a signal on sonar just before having to surface. The next diver, Kent Gulliford, swept away some debris and found the cockpit voice recorder. The team was ecstatic, but soon learned that the black box, like the first one found, had not recorded the last six minutes of flight.

"I'm itching to get back out there," Poirier says on a brief shore leave after 10 straight days of diving at the crash site. While on break, he sent an e-mail to the Swiss embassy website, offering condolences to the families and promising that divers were doing their best. Being of service, he says, "is all that keeps us sane."

Handsome and broad-shouldered, a proud French Canadian, Poirier speaks in the comfort of a favorite pub not far from the Shearwater military base where he lives, across the bay from Halifax. The father of three worries about the next time his children will get on a plane.

Another diver enters the pub with a glazed smile that might be exhaustion or maybe the relief of seeing someone else who knows what's down there. "This is my best friend," says Poirier, hugging Richard Lafreniere, 35. Ordinarily they train to repair battle-damaged ships and clear mines. There is no training for what they're doing now.

It helps, they agree, that so few bodies are whole. It's easier not seeing the human form. Near closing time, Poirier says he found a wallet floating on the surface. A woman's. He later saw a newspaper story quoting her relatives, and that made it harder. It made her whole.

"I had a niece who died when she was six," he says. "Cancer. She was very strong, but the life was taken out of her. It's as if her purpose was to strengthen our family ties, and it was an amazing thing this little girl accomplished. Maybe it will be the same for these families."

Poirier knows about the relatives who still go to the water's edge in Peggy's Cove, where the salvage boats are etched in gray on a soft horizon, and toss flowers into the sea. He says he'll dive through December if necessary.