text: A scuba diver and South Florida native who says he's lucky to be alive is filing suit against Florida Power and Light. Christopher Le Cun said he was sucked into an intake pipe at the St. Lucie Nuclear Power Plant. 
   
   This has happened at least once before, in 1989. Both scuba divers have almost identical tales of roughly five minutes of terror that they were sure would cost them their lives. 
   
   On July 12, 2015, Le Cun says he was enjoying a day of boating and scuba diving with his family and friends off the coast of Hutchinson Island. 
   
   "We were going from rock pile to rock pile and we saw a yellow buoy," said Le Cun. 
   
   The buoy marks three massive submerged structures, so large their silhouettes can be seen from hundreds of feet above. 
   
   "Did you have any idea what they were?" NewsChannel 5's Jared Werksma asked. "No, no clue, it actually was amazing to see," said Robert Blake. 
   
   Best friends since high school, Blake and Christopher tied their boat to the buoy and dove in to check out what was beneath while their families stayed behind on the boat. 
   
   "Were there any warnings posted anywhere?" Werksma asked. 
   
   "Nowhere, there was no warnings whatsoever," said Le Cun. 
   
   Florida Power & Light disagrees. A spokesman said since the plant was built the buoy has always read "stay back 100 feet." But both Blake and Le Cun claim there was no indication of danger, written or otherwise, until it was too late. 
   
   "I swam right up to this big structure and it looks like a building underwater. I felt a little bit of current. All of a sudden it got a little quicker and I said, 'this ain't right, this ain't right,'" said Le Cun. 
   
   "He got sucked in like a wet noodle. He just, poof, gone," said Blake. 
   
   "What were you feeling at that point, I mean when you saw him get pulled in?" asked Werksma. 
   
   "Instant death. I saw my friend die," said Blake. 
   
   Blake surfaced in a panic, screaming to the people on the boat that Chris was gone and that "something sucked him in." Chris' wife Brittany Le Cun says she thought Blake was joking until she saw the look on his face. 
   
   "All I remember doing was grabbing my son, holding him, crying and praying out loud," Brittany said. 
   
   "Did you think he was gone?" Werksma asked. "Yes," Brittany replied. 
   
   But deep beneath the surface Chris was holding on. 
   
   "I kind of felt like I got sucked over a waterfall and just instantly complete darkness. I was getting tumbled around and around. I'm trying to hold onto my mask and my regulator. I finally get ahold of my light and I'm trying to look around. As far as you can see, it's just black," Le Cun explained. 
   
   FPL says the pipe Christopher was in is 16 feet across, about a quarter-mile long, sucks in around 500,000 gallons of water per minute and is used to cool the plant's nuclear reactors. 
   
   "It's about a 4-1/2 to 5 minute ride. You get to do a lot of thinking," said Le Cun. 
   
   "I knew something was drawing all this water. All I could think about was these horror movies you know, this big turbine coming and I'm coming for it. You know, it's going to chop me up and kill me," Le Cun said with tears in his eyes. 
   
   "I contemplated, you know, do I just pull the regulator out of my mouth and just die? I started thinking about my family, you know, how are they going to survive without me?" Le Cun said. 
   
   Finally, Christopher says he saw the first indication that his long, dark journey was about to end one way or another. 
   
   "All of a sudden it looks like a match, out in the distance, just the littlest bit of what you've ever seen. When it gets a little bigger, then a little bigger. Then all of a sudden just, poof, daylight. Fish everywhere, crystal-clear water the sun is shining and I'm like, 'is this heaven?'" Le Cun exclaimed as if he was reliving it as we spoke. 
   
   He was still on Earth and counting his blessings as he pulled himself out of one of the reservoirs at the nuclear plant and spotted an employee. 
   
   Le Cun recalls, "I'm yelling help, help and he says, 'how did you get in here?' And I said, 'I came through the pipe' and he says...'what?'" 
   
   Le Cun says he was tattered and bruised but he could only think of one thing, "I said need a phone, I gotta call my wife." 
   
   Brittany was on the phone trying to explain to a 911 dispatcher what had just happened to her husband. So when calls started coming in from an unfamiliar number, naturally she ignored it. Until the third time, Chris called. 
   
   "Something's just telling me to pick up the phone so I did," said Brittany. 
   
   "She picks up and she just goes 'hello' and I said 'I'm alive,'" Le Cun remembers. 
   
   We asked Florida Power and Light about this incident and safety features at the St. Lucie Nuclear Power Plant. We received this statement: 
   
   Nothing is more important safety at our St. Lucie Nuclear Power Plants, which is a reason that we have a protective over the intake piping. The diver intentionally swam into one of the intake pipes after bypassing a piece of equipment to minimize the entry of objects. 
   
   FPL would not comment on the pending litigation which claims negligence for inadequate safety precautions. Le Cun is hoping it will lead to safety improvements before this happens a third time. ||||| (CNN) Christopher Le Cun said he didn't know he was scuba diving near a pipe from the St. Lucie Nuclear Power Plant in Florida that pulled in around 500,000 gallons of ocean water per minute. 
   
   But, he said, he soon realized he'd lost control of the situation. 
   
   "When I was first sucked into the pipe, it was so turbulent it was unbelievable," he told CNN on Saturday. "I had to hang onto my mask. It was 20-30 seconds before I got my bearings." 
   
   He says he spent four or five minutes tumbling through the darkness of the pipe, which Florida Power & Light Co. says is 16 feet in diameter and a quarter-mile long. He thought about his wife and kids, back on the boat. 
   
   'You're really lucky' 
   
   "Then I saw a tiny light in the distance, almost like somebody lit a match, then all the sudden it was on me," Le Cun said. "It spit me out into the sunlight into this canal and there were tons of fish around. Goliath groupers, tarpons, a bunch of fish that didn't make it." 
   
   He was in a pond at the nuclear plant. 
   
   "I saw a worker there and he asks, 'How did you get in here?' He says, 'You're really lucky, we were getting ready to leave for the night in five minutes.' " 
   
   Le Cun borrowed the man's cell phone and called his wife. She didn't take the call, though, because she was busying talking to 911 and the Coast Guard and didn't recognize the strange number. 
   
   Power company sued 
   
   He made it out alive but Le Cun has filed a lawsuit against FPL over the July 12 experience. He says the intake pipe was not marked and posed a danger to him. 
   
   FPL spokesman Greg Brostowicz told CNN there's a protective cap over the intake piping. 
   
   "The diver in July intentionally swam into one of the intake pipes after bypassing a piece of equipment to minimize the entry of objects," he said. 
   
   "There is an eight-foot buoy floating at the point of the intake piping, which has been in place since the plant opened, and states that people should stay 100 feet away. There are three intake pipes, which extend for a quarter mile along the floor of the ocean, and the one that the diver swam into is 16 feet in diameter with a protective cap." 
   
   Le Cun said he did see some sort of cap but "that thing is not designed to keep anybody or anything out." 
   
   Another diver sucked into pipe in 1989 
   
   Le Cun told CNN affiliate WPTV that he and a friend saw the yellow buoy that day and large submerged silhouettes underneath. They decided to see what was down there."I am 100% positive that there were no signs on the buoy," he said. "I know that because my boat was tied to that buoy." 
   
   This is not the first time a diver has been sucked into an intake pipe at the nuclear plant. It happened in 1989 to William Lamm, who also survived, according to a report from United Press International. 
   
   "I thought I was dead," Lamm said in the UPI story. "It was darker than any dark I have ever seen. I tumbled and bounced all over the sides of the pipe." 
   
   Le Cun says he doesn't know if he'll ever embrace scuba diving again. 
   
   "I really don't want to give it up, but I don't know," he said. "It's something I've always enjoyed with my family and friends, but I've only been in the water once since it happened and I didn't enjoy it. Maybe someday I'll do it again." ||||| PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. -- A scuba diver who got sucked into a pipe and was carried more than a quarter-mile into a cooling pond at a nuclear power plant says he has had nightmares about it. 
   
   'It was devastating. 
   
   Every time I tried to fall asleep that night, I saw it and felt it all over again,' said William Lamm, 45, who was sucked Monday into the intake pipe opening in eight feet of water off the Florida Power & Light Co. nuclear plant at Hutchinson Island. 
   
   Lamm was carried through 1,600 feet of pipeline and depositied in the plant's cooling pond. 
   
   'I thought I was dead,' Lamm said. 'It was darker than any dark I have ever seen. I tumbled and bounced all over the sides of the pipe.' 
   
   Power company spokesman Gary Mehalik said the 16-foot pipe has a concrete cap suspended near the ocean opening to cut down on the suction and prevent fish from being sucked in as well as divers, but Lamm said it obviously does not work. 
   
   Mehalik said there also is a buoy nearby marking the pipe. Lamm said he saw it but didn't know what it meant. 
   
   After Lamm was dumped into the cooling pond, he was pulled out by security guards. He declined offers to have doctors examine him.
target: – Florida native Christopher Le Cun was out enjoying a day on the boat with his family and best friend on July 12, 2015, when the two decided to anchor to a buoy and scuba dive down to mysterious structures faintly visible below. Le Cun swam up to one that he likened to a building and felt a sudden, strong current. "He got sucked in like a wet noodle—he just, poof, gone," his diving partner, Robert Blake, tells WPTV. Le Cun says his surroundings instantly dissolved into "complete darkness" and he struggled to hold onto his mask and regulator while he spent roughly five minutes being sucked through a 1/4-mile-long, 16-foot-wide intake pipe that pulls in 500,000 gallons of water a minute to cool the St. Lucie Nuclear Power Plant's reactors. "You get to do a lot of thinking," says Le Cun, who envisioned a turbine chopping him up on the other end. "Do I just pull the regulator out of my mouth and just die?" Meanwhile, Blake surfaced, horrified, and Le Cun's wife called 911. But Le Cun survived without intervention, having been spat out into the plant's cooling pond. Le Cun, who tells CNN there were no warning signs, is now filing a lawsuit against Florida Power and Light, which issued a statement saying the intake pipe has a protective covering and that Le Cun "intentionally" swam in. An FPL rep also tells CNN the buoy above the pipe tells people to stay 100 feet away. This isn't the first time a diver has survived the journey: William Lamm tells UPI his ride through the dark tunnel in 1989 was "devastating." (Check out why these scuba divers are knowingly risking their lives.)