Who has performed a rescue?

[Diver0001]

A near tragic story Diver0001 and I think that the DM should have had his cert revoked.

I don't know if this happened or not.

The DM was acquitted of criminal liability by claiming that he believed that his life was in danger and that he fled, leaving the student behind, in order to save his own life. In the Netherlands there is no law saying that you are required to risk death to save the life of another. I don't personally believe that what he said is true. I think when the student ran out of air the DM panicked and bolted and lied about it in court but he was well represented by a smart lawyer and got off with this story. In the civil case he was found guilty and successfully sued.

I also do not know if the agency revoked his cert or not. I do agree with you that allowing him to continue working with students puts more people at risk and that the agency SHOULD have revoked the cert. Maybe they did, maybe they didn't. I never heard. In either case it would surprise me to hear that he went back to DMing again after that. At the scene he collapsed and had to be taken away by ambulance so I assume he was pretty traumatized by what had happened. If he is any kind of man at all he would see what he did and stop working as DM of his own accord.

R..

 

[Bob DBF]

Dropping a tank is not part of rescue training.

Training changes as equipment changes.

Not now, because the tank is integrated in to the BC. Before the mass availability of the Stab jacket in the mid '70's most wore a Mae West (just a chest mounted life preserver) and later modified into a horse-collar BC, if any flotation device at all. Neither of these devices were attached to the tank harness except for the later horse-collars (with air supply to the BC as we have now), so the tank could be dropped and you were no longer encumbered by it on the surface. Because of the way I weight myself diving wet, I can drop my tank and wing and float on the surface with my weightbelt on, this can come in handy in a rescue, self or others.


Bob

 

[mdb]

I've been involved in two such incidents over 45 years of diving.

One, a good buddy who sucked his tank dry while abalone hunting off Point Loma, CA-in those days in
So Cal you could take 4 abs a day using SCUBA. He was reaching into a crevice to grab a nice AB and
he ran out of air. I was a few feet away doing the same thing.

I felt a tug on my regulator hose.

Panicked eyes in my face as he pulled the reg from my mouth and clamped down.

I did not have a secondary reg.

I bailed out of my tank and back pack and made a fee ascent from about 80 FSW.

My friend surfaced a few minutes later with my tank and reg under his arm.

It all ended well. Also ended my reliance on the "buddy" system

Second time was a dive company dive off Grand Cayman.

We were testing some new regs and other gear.

At about 120 FSW one of the test divers had a massive 1st stage failure.

He came over my head and in a calm way signaled out of air.

I gave him my primary and went onto to my Poseidon secondary.

We made a slow ascent to the surface, no problem.

I prefer solo diving.

 

[Erich S]

Hi Bob,
I see your point. Both the instructor and myself were wearing horse collar BCs so it was the right move to ditch the tanks along with weight belts. Techniques and equipment change through the years.

 

[John Bantin]

John, NO FAIR posting a link to half a story that requires a subscription to get other half the story!

Sorry, I thought that article was free-to-read by anyone.

 

[Bubblesong]

Sorry, I thought that article was free-to-read by anyone.

The other posting was free to read to anyone, but this one was the cliffhanger.

 

[admikar]

I have saved 3 panicking swimmers, all when I was in dive school. 2 where the same guy about a week apart ant the other one was a guy that I didn't care for but I would have felt bad letting him drown. Panicking swimmers are dangerous and try to drown you, I was taught that if you cant calm them down by talking to them then you try to knock them out with a punch to the head, I didn't knock them out but the punch to the face did knock some sense into them and they quit freaking out. I was quite surprised how well it worked.

I was twice involved in swimmer rescue, not on SCUBA though and I was second respondent. In both cases, a friend of mine (first respondent) was caught and pushed under, so I went to primal mode, no talk-just hit,and hit hard. It worked in both instances, although in one case I had to hit hard a friend, to keep him from killing the "victim" afterwards.

 

[Dish]

Good for you! Dropping a tank is not part of rescue training. Inflating the BC and then dropping weights if necessary is appropriate. Did this cause you to get your rescue diver certification?

True today, but back in the yoke BC days it was common procedure. Many of us had no weight to drop and ditching the tank gave better access to the victim for a variety of the rescue techniques that were taught by the Red Cross at the time. The whole integrated BC thing changed that, obviously.

Edit: Sorry, I see now that Bob already pointed the out.

 

[Brandon]

Outside of work related water rescues/recovery, I've only done one real rescue for a dive buddy. Buddy signaled trouble in about 7' of water, 2 minutes into a dive, and went to the surface. I surfaced and swam the short distance to the entry with him, talking to him about what was going on. He was verbal for a little bit and described a general discomfort/uneasiness, but then stopped answering. We made it to the shore, I ditched my gear, and had him lay back to take his fins off for him, and he lost consciousness before I could get the first fin off. Asked bystanders to call 911 and get an ambulance rolling, pulled him out of the water and he had a seizure on the shore. Afterwards he was still unresponsive verbally and to pain, and his breathing was starting to get irregular. We got him out of his drysuit neckseal and threw him on a deco reg (we didn't have 100%, but had 50%). That worked for a few minutes, but his breathing rate was still dropping and I was about to switch to rescue breaths when the ambulance pulled up.

With help, several of us managed to get him quickly out of his drysuit and undergarment and loaded into the ambulance. Nothing was cut, and I can tell you first hand that when you know your buddy can't feel pain, removing their condom catheter can be done very, very quickly. That's really the only funny part of this story...

I rode with him to the hospital and stayed with him in the ER, coordinating with DAN to feed information to the emergency docs. They couldn't find anything physically wrong with him to explain the incident. DAN and the ER's opinion was that it was not dive related, but may be related to other medical/psych conditions he's dealing with. Regardless, his personal doctor cleared him for diving again shortly thereafter. Additional problems sprung up over the years and I ended up having a heart-to-heart with him about whether or not he should continue diving. Lost the friendship as a result.

I'll echo some of the comments that have been made that "true rescues" are not a pleasant experience, regardless of the outcome. As opposed to your average emergency responder, you probably know these people quite well and may have responsibilities to them, their family, or their friends that will extend beyond the original incident. The rescue is the easy part.

 

[Erich S]

One kinda funny thing that I forgot to mention was that we rushed our instructor to the hospital and there we were all standing around the emergency room in our wet suits. The staff didn't know what to make of us in that small Wisconsin town.