Family members mourn the death of fire officer Sailendu Mohanty at SCB Medical College and Hospital in Cuttack on Thursday. Picture by Badrika Nath Das

Cuttack, May 3: An award-winning fire officer drowned as tragedy struck during a training programme for firemen at Debidwar Ghat in Banki, 25km from here, today.

Assistant fire officer Sailendu Mohanty, 52, a President’s award winner and a gold medallist in underwater skills, did not surface after taking a dive in the Mahanadi around 8.30am. His colleagues later fished out his body.

Chief fire service officer Sukant Sethi said the exact cause of death was being ascertained, while suspecting that he could have died because of asphyxia or a sudden cardiac arrest.

“Mohanty was one of our best officers,” said Binay Kumar Behera, director of fire services.

He had dived into the river along with some others to be trained in the use of some breathing apparatus that were recently imported from Sweden.

A trained diver and a gold medallist in “waterman-ship,” Mohanty hailed from Jajpur district. He had also received the President’s award for his distinguished service.

Sethi said that Mohanty and other 10 other officers had dived into the water after the first session of training. Though all others managed to float to the surface after 10 to 15 minutes, Mohanty was not to be seen.

No one suspected anything wrong as the breathing apparatus enables a diver to stay underwater for over 40 minutes. “Mohanty had earlier managed to float to the surface twice. But, he did not come out after his third dive. It was only when we saw the water bubbles that we sensed that something was wrong and immediately carried out a rescue operation,” Sethi said.

“We suspect that Mohanty died after his oxygen supply through the face mask was snapped which could have been either because of some technical snag or mishandling of the equipment,” said another fire official requesting anonymity.

The facemask of Mohanty had also come off indicating that he had tried to remove it after oxygen supply from the cylinder was cut off, an official said.

Mohanty was rushed to SCB Medical College and Hospital where he was declared brought dead. “Only the post-mortem report can throw light on the exact cause of his death. However, it is suspected that Mohanty died because of asphyxia,” said SCB casualty medical officer Deepak Ranjan Nayak.

Official sources said that a group of 20 persons, including senior fire officials and 10 officers of fire training institute, Bhubaneswar, were being trained on the use of a breathing apparatus by an expert from Sweden.

The expert had already trained a lot of divers of Indian Navy and was here to train the officers of the state fire service about in the use of the new equipment. The machine plays a crucial role in carrying out underwater rescue operations.

About 15 sets of the breathing apparatus have been procured by the state fire services directorate to add to its available resources to carry out rescue operations in case of floods and other search operations under water.

Significantly, the training programme was being organised just a few metres away from the shore and there were also subsequent plans to conduct underwater training in deep water today.

The last rites of Mohanty will be conducted at Puri following a guard of honour on Buxi Bazar fire station premises tomorrow.