Big Guy, Out of Gas

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o2fill

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Messages
17
Reaction score
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Location
Richmond, VA
# of dives
200 - 499
Hi,

I've posted a new entry on my blog. The blog reviews dive incidents that I've been involved with or witnessed and the role that fitness played in them.

Here's the text:

Big Guy - Out of Gas
When I get on a dive boat, I invariably do 3 things that end up getting me in trouble (actually, its just the third thing that leads to trouble):

Pick out a spot where I'm not in anyone's way.
Put my gear together quickly and stow whatever I don't need.
Find a good perch from which to check out the other divers.


And so it was on the Monday of a 2009 trip. Nearly every diver on board was an old friend or, at least, well known to me. However there was one guy, let's call him "Steve" (I'm going to use pseudonyms for other divers unless I have permission to discuss them directly), who looked out of place and more than a little uncomfortable. This big, happy, boisterous fellow was putting his regulator together with the tank backwards (think back, we've all done it or something like it). Fumbling with the screw on the yoke of his first stage, he spun it right off and dropped it overboard triggering a scramble for a new one before we headed out. Lots of folks helpfully dug around for a replacement. I ended up lending him the one from my DIN-to-yoke adapter. I decided to keep an eye on him when we splashed. What I should have done was pulled him aside and checked on his background. It's the first of two major regrets I have from that day.

A couple of hours and one fantastic below deck snooze (for me) later, Steve entered the water. I followed immediately, caught up to him on the hang line below the boat and followed him down. Reaching the wreck 100' below, I found that the current was flowing from the anchor at the stern toward the bow. The return trip was going to be up-current but the current was light so it was no big deal. To my right, Steve floated with the current down the hull. He was clearly having some buoyancy issues and was blowing a lot of bubbles. As we reached the far end, I asked how much air he had. After a couple of false starts, Steve understood and showed me his gauge. It read 300 psi! He'd used over 90% of his air in 8 minutes. And he didn't seem to see this as a problem.

Deciding that I needed to get him to the anchor line before putting him on my air, I grabbed his wrist and hauled him the length of the wreck. When we got to the line, he was nearly out of gas so I switched him to my 40 cubic foot pony bottle which also had the EAN30 mix we were diving. We quickly ascended to 50' so we could cut down on his air volume per breath. At 50', I showed him his gauge , made it clear that he was going to be ok and tried to convey that I was running the dive now. We ascended slowly, Steve calming as we rose.

As we approached the boat, Steve started looking up with concern at the "headbanger" mushroom anchor weighing the hang line down. The surface chop was ramming it up an down as is typical for an offshore dive. To protect his head, I rotated him away from the line so that I was under the weight and prepared to transfer us to our safety stop. At 20', Steve suddenly spun away from me to grab the hang line. As he did so, he moved past the limit of my pony's reg hose, the mouthpiece clamped fiercely between his teeth. Before I could pull him back, he ripped the mouthpiece from the reg and took a huge 'breath' of water. His eyes rolled with panic as he tried to sort out what had happened. I took my reg out and purged it as I popped it into his mouth. With my other hand I moved to my Air 2 (by the way, I now have an 8' octopus reg on my main first stage and on my pony - just in case). He shook with spasms of coughing and retching; and started a run for the surface which I aborted with a clamp on his shoulder.

After a couple of minutes calming him down, we were getting really low on air. I guided us to the surface and inflated his BC as he grabbed hold of the ladder. Unfortunately, after 15 minutes of panic, he was exhausted and could not climb out under his own power. The guys on the swim step were pulling but he was at least 400 lbs fully geared up. I settled in on the bottom ladder rung with my shoulders under him and, in a moment worthy of Borat, helped heave him out of the water.

When I arrived on deck, he was out of his gear and lying prone; eyes shut. "****!" I thought. "He's dead." But Steve opened his eyes and smiled, "Did you just save my life?" "Three times." I answered. "Let's get out of this gear and talk about it up top."

Out in the warming sun, we rehydrated, grabbed a sandwich and talked through the incident. Steve was visibly shaken and both of us were wiped. It turned out that Steve had just 6 dives - his certification dives. This was way beyond his experience set. Watching him getting ready, it had been obvious. We figured out that he was over weighted, which led in part to his buoyancy problems; and we talked about air management. I offered to guide him through his second dive and to get him properly weighted. On that dive, when he reached 1000 psi, I sent him up the line with some other divers - he had a great time.

Which leads me to my second major regret. What we didn't talk about was his general lack of fitness and how that had endangered both of us. Steve had no business being out there because he was too inexperienced, yes. But he also was grossly overweight and completely unaware of how his lack of fitness drove the causal chain that could have ended his life.

Just over a year later, Steve died of a heart attack while diving in the Virgin Islands. When I heard he was gone, I felt more than a twinge of guilt. His hometown paper ran stories about all of the wonderful things he had done and was doing with his life. What stuck with me was how popular he was for officiating at weddings. With his cherubic grin and easy charm, he was kind of unforgettable. He may have been a terrible diver but he was one heck of a guy.

I should have laid it out for him when we first talked after the rescue. I should have said:

Look, you're lucky to be alive.
You are too inexperienced to be diving out here without expressly seeking guidance from an experienced buddy.
You ran out of air because your lack of fitness compounded a slight buoyancy problem into a major air supply issue.
You could have killed both of us trying to get you out of the water.
You have to think about this like hiking underwater. If you couldn't comfortably go on a six mile mountain hike, you shouldn't be out here.
You are too nice a guy to lose ... please drop 100 lbs or quit diving.
Please, take the second dive off and think about it.


I wonder if that conversation would not have served him better?

A couple of weeks later I shared this story with our dive club. That experience led to this blog's first entry.

Dive safe,

Phil

You can read the other entries here.
 
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It's a good story with a lot of points to ponder.

I do have to observe, however, that by the time you met him, the die was almost certainly cast. Coronary artery disease severe enough to kill doesn't happen in a year.

It's never a bad thing to lose weight and get fitter . . . but even better is to notice the process happening as you gain the weight in the first place, and stop it before it gets out of hand. That's why I get SO angry with the parents of obese small children (180 lb 6 year olds, for example, and yes, I have seen one). Letting small children get overweight sets them up for a lifetime of struggle with obesity and its complications.
 
Thanks for posting this. Quite interesting.

You cannot control what someone else does. It is difficult to believe that he was not aware of his health problems. Likely you would have been one more person "nagging" him to do something about his weight. As I heard a comedian say recently "We smokers only say we are trying to quit to get you people to stop nagging us to quit smoking."

I know that this is not the point of your post, but I can't help but ask why he was even allowed on that dive. A 100 ft open ocean wreck dive with a brand new OW cert - likely a temp card at that. I even wonder how he got certified.

Also, it is not clear whether you two were diving as a pair or you saw a potential problem and (thankfully) decided to keep an eye on him.
 
Accolades to you for helping a novice diver in a tough situation. I agree with TSandM, there was nothing you could have done as the die was cast.
I have been lucky enough to get great advice from experienced divers and, even with my low dive count, am very comfortable in the water...especially after loosing 35lbs!
The weight loss has improved my life in all ways, shapes, and forms. It improved my sac rate, my buoyancy, and the ease of my beach entry's, and my love life!
Get Wet!
 
Thanks for sharing this story. I've had a simular experience with a grossly overweight diver. I was a DMT at the time, assisting on the guy's open water course. It ended up with me performing a full rescue on an unconsious, non-breathing diver and heli evacuation (he survived).

Far too big a proportion of diving fatalities in the UK (BSAC statistics) are due to underlying health issues, normally associated with obesity.

Since that time, I am a firm believer that BMI should feature within agencies' pre-course medical declarations. A diver that is classified as obese should recieve a thorough medical assessment before exposure to the stresses of scuba diving.
 
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What a story. Thank you for posting. What sobering ending with Steve's passing...I agree with all before me - you could not have done anything... I am myself on a soap box after diving with several divers that were giving off signs of trouble before splashing... and I keep learning how to react to those situations in a courteous, professional but firm matter. I guess it is an art that we need to learn.
 
Firstly - thanks to everyone for the support after my last post. While saving "Steve" was a high, learning about his passing made the whole thing feel a little futile. We really have to get the word out that diving, while safe in so many respects, is not an activity for folks with cardiac or pulmonary related health issues. We all recognize that the key to safety lies in skills training. What I believe is under-stressed by stores and cert agencies is that we should also be training for fitness. Perhaps this is where clubs could come in ...

I've just posted another entry - Out of Gas Too! about a similar incident 2 days later. It starts ....

In my last post, I told the story of Steve; a tremendously likable fellow who ran out of air at 100' and then got into all kinds of trouble related to his poor fitness level. Sadly, Steve died of a heart attack while diving just over a year later. This posting is about an incident that occurred just two days after Steve's initial incident. Same boat. Same ocean. Different guy - let's call him "Brian".

The full story is at here.

The blog also has information on my own brush with death and the reaction of our dive club to the story about "Steve".

If you have the chance, please forward these stories or the blog address to your buddies and clubs so that we can, together, push increased awareness of the need for a fitness dialog between friends, buddies, and club members.

Dive Safely,

Phil
 
Phill,

From what I can figure, Steve weighed over 300 lbs. Don't you think he might have known that he was 1) obese and 2) out of shape? If he did not know these things, it was because he was in a state of denial. It is quite likely that Steve had already heard anything that you might have said about his fitness before. I think he was really lucky that your were around to bail him out. You had enough on your plate explaining the scuba stuff to him. Also, I doubt that it your effort was not futile. Steve did get to live another year after all. That is time he would have missed otherwise.

Pat
 
I'm sure it is traumatic for those that witness a dive fatality, for those that recover the bodies, etc.......but why is it so bad for someone with health issues to die doing something they enjoy?

You would never dream of saying, "Bob shouldn't golf because he's morbidly obese."
You would instead say, "Hey! At least Bob is out doing something."

Dying in a hospital is the least dignifying place to die I can think of.
I'd rather croak underwater!
 
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