This past Tuesday, Yakima and East Valley firefighters came together to remember.
The firefighters met at Yakima Fire Station 93 in a ceremony put together by International Association of Firefighters Local 469 to mark the 25th anniversary of the deaths of Russet “Rusty” Hauber and Charlie “J.R.” Mestaz, Yakima and East Valley firefighters respectively who drowned trying to rescue two divers trapped inside a canal siphon in Zillah.
Hauber and Mestaz were remembered as men who served their communities and for the legacy of service they left for their families and their fellow firefighters.
“Pretty much every aspect of (Hauber’s) life was service, and he loved it,” said Tori Dede, Hauber’s daughter.
The men’s deaths also led to changes in how Yakima County search and rescue crews would handle similar situations in the future.
Born in Anacortes, Hauber graduated from Republic High School and Spokane Community College. A self-employed mechanic, Hauber also served as a volunteer fighter with the Naches Fire Department and a member of the ski patrol at White Pass.
Dede said her father was a happy person who would take his children horseback and motorcycle riding, and bring them down to the fire station.
In 1994, Hauber became a full-time firefighter with the Yakima Fire Department. Hauber helped organize the department’s technical rescue team, which performs water and high-angle rescues. YFD Capt. Jeff Pfaff, who served with Hauber, said Hauber would pass along skills such as knot-tying to other firefighters, as well as continually hone his own abilities.
Pfaff recalled hearing a noise in a station once, and found Hauber rappelling off the station’s tower.
Mestaz was born in California and owned a car repair shop in Moxee. He was a volunteer firefighter with East Valley Fire Department.
He was remembered as a “down-to-earth and enterprising guy who can master anything he puts his mind to,” his friend Les Riel said in a 1997 interview with the Yakima Herald-Republic.
Mestaz and Hauber were certified scuba divers and dove together often. They were considered the best divers in the county sheriff’s Search and Rescue Team.
On March 15, 1997, Marty Rhodes, a Sunnyside man, and John Eberle from Grandview were hired by the Roza Irrigation District to clear stolen cars from one of the canal’s siphons in Zillah. Joyriders sometimes would ditch their stolen rides in the canal, where they would wind up in one of the seven siphons, and removing them was part of the canal company’s spring maintenance program.
Siphons are used when gravity-fed canals face uneven terrain. A siphon consists of an underground tunnel that drops down and then comes back up on the other side of the obstacle, such as a ravine, with the pressure from the downward leg of the siphon pushing the water back up and out the other end.
The one in Zillah went down to a depth of 104 feet, and stretched 2,100 feet.
Rhodes and Eberle had done the job before, going inside the siphon and hooking up cables to the cars to haul them out. When they went into the dark water that day, they told the workers waiting on the canal bank that if they weren’t back in an hour to call 911.
The hour passed, and with no sign of the men, the workers called for help. Hauber and Mestaz responded to the call with other members of the rescue team.
By the time they arrived, the divers had been in the siphon for two hours. Hoping that the cold water would have bought the lost divers time, Hauber and Mestaz clipped on to the cable and went into the siphon, with two other divers standing by at opening.
After almost a half-hour, the divers saw lights coming back, and then stop, along with bubbles from their air tanks. They dove down and found Hauber and Mestaz and brought them to the surface.
Both men were taken to local hospitals, but Hauber was pronounced dead that day. Mestaz would fall into a coma and die three days later.
Hauber was 34, and Mestaz was 36.
Pfaff, who was off that day and called back when Hauber and Mestaz were brought out of the siphon, said Mestaz had shared air from a spare tank with Hauber to save both their lives.
Investigators would find the men had made it to a depth of 100 feet and their air tanks, which they expected to last an hour, were completely empty.
Hauber’s funeral at the Yakima Valley SunDome was attended by more than 2,000 people, including firefighters from around the region. In a letter to Hauber’s family, then-Gov. Gary Locke called both men heroes.
Mestaz’s funeral at East Valley High School’s gymnasium was attended by 600 people.
Pfaff said he and other Yakima firefighters put “RuHa” — the marking Hauber used on his fire gear — on their helmets as a memorial to him. They also named the department’s first aerial truck “Rusty” in his memory.
When that truck was replaced, Pfaff said, firefighters fought to have the name applied to the new truck to keep his memory alive.
“It’s part of our culture,” Pfaff said.
East Valley Fire Department named one of its engines “J.R.” for Mestaz.
Both rigs were parked on the apron at Station 93 for the memorial service.
Rhodes’ and Eberle’s bodies were recovered from the siphon three days later, after most of the water in the siphon was drained. The cars the men were after were actually by the east end of the siphon, where only a couple feet of water covered them.
Investigations by Pierce County Sheriff’s Office and the state Department of Labor and Industries found multiple factors that contributed to the men’s deaths.
The four miscalculated how much air they needed when going down into the siphon, which resulted in them running out of air inside the dark, water-filled tunnel.
None of the divers was using safety lines that could have allowed them to signal a need for help and be pulled to safety. Rhodes and Eberle did not have a backup team of divers standing by to help in an emergency.
L&I fined the canal district for the violations, but took no action against the sheriff’s office because Hauber and Mestaz were acting in a volunteer capacity.
In the wake of the deaths, the sheriff’s office said the search and rescue team would no longer try to do rescues for overdue swimmers and divers, instead treating those cases as recovery operations which meant divers would take fewer risks. The sheriff’s office also sought additional training for the volunteer dive team.
Pfaff said the deaths were a “strong reminder of our jobs, that we’re one alarm away from something critical happening.”
Dede said Hauber’s fellow firefighters reached out to support the family after his death, and continue to remember him and his family. And she has made Hauber a part of his grandchildren’s lives, telling them that he died doing exactly what he wanted to do.
“Of all the ways to go, (trying to save other people’s lives) is an honorable way to go,” Dede said. ”He wouldn’t take it back. He’d do it again, even if he knew.”
Dede said she honors her father’s memory by striving to be a good person and looking for ways to serve other people.
“So many in life let loss overtake them, and I think that’s the opposite of what anyone you lost would want you to do. I never wanted to be a victim,” she said.
YFD’s firefighter of the year award is named for Hauber.
A memorial to Hauber and Mestaz is set at the corner of East Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and North First Street, with hand impressions from the men’s families in the concrete in which the memorial plaques are embedded. The plaques also contain the motto of search and rescue: “So That Others May Live.”
Both men are also listed on the National Fallen Firefighters Memorial in Emmitsburg, Md.