FOWLER, Calif. (KFSN) — The clock is ticking on a desperate search to find a missing Fowler man and employee of National Raisin Company.
“Juan Patino, one of the employees that works here, was working on the facility plant, specifically last seen at the irrigation pond. He was actively pumping rainwater off of a tarp. That was his last known location,” said Fowler Police Chief Greg Gularte.
That was just after 1 p.m. Thursday.
Co-workers grew concerned when the 39-year-old did not log back in from that location after an hour.
“His vehicle that he was using to work on the work site was left in front of this area. His hard hat is there and there’s a tear in the canvas cover of this water digester,” said Chief Gularte.
Fresno County Fire and CAL-OSHA assisting with the investigation.
“The chemicals that are inside of that digester are very caustic, and it requires a specialization of a commercial diver to come out and dive in that environment,” said Chief Gularte.
Potable Divers — a group of divers out of Salt Lake City, Utah who carry out hazmat diving operations — answered the call from Fresno County Fire to carry out a search-and-rescue dive.
David Harvey is the operations manager for Potable Divers and called the operation “complicated.”
Harvey is an experienced diver with more than two decades of diving experience.
The four-person crew will be navigating a digestion cistern under extreme conditions.
“There’s 8 feet of mud in the bottom and it’s really difficult to move through, zero visibility as it’s not really water, it is a digestive tank. They’ll be doing everything by feel,” said Harvey.
The experienced and specialized divers have a history of diving at this same location — when it recovered a loose tarp in 2020.
“The circumstances and even this cover on this tank, I’ve not heard of somebody going through before on a cover like this. So that’s kind of rare,” said Harvey.
Potable Divers hope to provide peace to the family of Juan Patino.
“You can’t turn people like that. They need closure,” said Harvey.
Fowler Police secured the scene overnight Thursday into Friday.
