Deaths at Eagles Nest - Homosassa FL

[grey2112]

Careful what you say as I said the same thing several times

I made the mistake of teaching my wife how to shoot, reload, and build her own AR rifles. She now can build a more accurate rifle than I can, has better vision, and is a hell of a lot meaner than me. She told me, and I quote - "If you ever even LOOK at a cave underwater I will drag you by your short and curlies to the range and use you for target practice."

 

[Ron Lee]

As a non-cave diver, my view is that unless the cave diving community sees that additional measures are needed, this should be considered as the acceptable loss level in a free society. Both could probably read and the warning signs adequate for sane people.

Many recreational activities have fatalities. Some evoke sadness because of factors beyond a person's control. Others the person gambled and lost.

In my opinion, this is a case of two people gambling and their luck ran out.

If I controlled what happened next, the cave system would remain open. The official case would be that two people went in a location FAR beyond their training/qualification and that error resulted in their deaths.

One possible change, if legal, would be to document with picture and/or words the fatalities on a sign there.

 

[ItsBruce]

A.) Plenty of people knew Spivey was cave diving without a cave cert. Plenty of people knew Spivey was taking Sanchez diving, without any cert. The math is pretty easy to do. But in case that's still hard to fathom, they were both posting about their exploits - including pictures - on FaceBook and cave diving forums. Unless people thought they were going to dive the pool at LR - which I believe is about 10ft deep - with all this gear...

Lets run a little challenge! Can anyone tell me what happened to me in May? It is all over several websites, including FB. And I'll give you a hint: it ended in a helicopter ride. If not, then it stands to reason no one who knew better may have known what these guys were doing.

 

[lv2dive]

i have a lot of respect for you (as far as what I've read online anyway <G>) and agree with a LOT of what you have to say. But I don't think it's fair to assume that a lot of CAVE DIVERS knew that Spivey was taking Sanchez cave diving - especially at places like Eagle's Nest. Spivey had (some of) his non-cave diving friends and family convinced he was safety personified! Others, now, are saying they knew he was going to kill himself... but they didn't do anything to stop him.

But I have not seen ONE THING that leads me to believe a single cave diver KNEW that he was taking his son into Eagle's Nest - except one guy who had a deco obligation and in retrospect realized he probably saw them but by the time he got out of the cave they were gone. There were no posts on cave forums. There were a few posts on Cave Atlas by the son (with no info as to his age and/or cert status) and pictures on FB we saw after the tragedy... if cave divers were not friends with the son, how would we know what was going on?

Would I condone a cavern dive at LR with the two of them? No. If I saw them, would I get into a discussion about it? Now, yes. How far would I take it? Hard to say, even now. These two, in Hogarthian kit... could have been diving in the basin or doing a cavern dive at LR. We aren't a nanny state. And, I kind of imagine that they chose times when there were not a lot of people around.

You hit the nail on the head when you said plenty of *people* knew. There is a difference between *people* knowing what was going on, and cave divers knowing Spivey was taking Sanchez into LR and EN.

Earlier someone said that Sanchez was not a child. I don't care that Sanchez was 15, 15 is not old enough to make decisions like that. There is a reason the age of legal consent is 18. I am in 100% agreement with you WRT to aggravated manslaughter.

A.) Plenty of people knew Spivey was cave diving without a cave cert. Plenty of people knew Spivey was taking Sanchez diving, without any cert. The math is pretty easy to do. But in case that's still hard to fathom, they were both posting about their exploits - including pictures - on FaceBook and cave diving forums. Unless people thought they were going to dive the pool at LR - which I believe is about 10ft deep - with all this gear...

B.) As to whether Spivey was doing anything illegal, well, he dodged that bullet by killing himself. Had he survived, the Florida statute for "aggravated manslaughter of a minor" could have probably applied. described in Florida 782.07 as follows "A person who causes the death of any person under the age of 18 by culpable negligence under s. 827.03(2)(b) commits aggravated manslaughter of a child, a felony of the first degree." (827.03 specifies culpable negligence as "An intentional act that could reasonably be expected to result in physical or mental injury to a child.")

I think you could produce a line of expert witnesses out the door to testify that a diver with no cave training or certs, taking an uncertified minor cave diving, particularly at Eagle's Nest, without proper training, gear, breathing gas mixes, or adequate gas supply would clearly meet the burden of "reasonably be expected to result in injury."

 

[shoredivr]

I made the mistake of teaching my wife how to shoot, reload, and build her own AR rifles. She now can build a more accurate rifle than I can, has better vision, and is a hell of a lot meaner than me. She told me, and I quote - "If you ever even LOOK at a cave underwater I will drag you by your short and curlies to the range and use you for target practice."

Since she is obviously a keen student, i think both of you should try intro to cave, or intro to tech. She'll love the challenge and who knows how far up the tech food chain you can go?

 

[lv2dive]

I have no idea what happened to you in May but I bet I could figure it out given the information you provided - just like it didn't take too long to figure out that Sanchez was diving LR and EN.

Lets run a little challenge! Can anyone tell me what happened to me in May? It is all over several websites, including FB. And I'll give you a hint: it ended in a helicopter ride. If not, then it stands to reason no one who knew better may have known what these guys were doing.

 

[ItsBruce]

A thought on training:

One can learn most anything from books or online if one is motivated. However only with training by a professional can one can get a degree of assurance they will be able to perform in the real world or at least be warned that they can't perform adequately.

 

[Jax]

Am I the only one who continues to be puzzled that people believe that they can legislate, or stop in other ways, the consequences of stupidity?


I believe - perhaps naively - that if someone had *known* for sure the kid was a minor, and *known* for sure what they were doing, that someone would have found a way to get authority involved. However, acting on suspicions is a whole lot different . . . .

 

[Cleavitt]

Now we have him/them diving mix?

No, they were not diving mix. However, one of the basic rules of cave diving is that the equivalent narcotic depth is not to exceed 100'. What I was trying to say is that the dive they were attempting is normally considered a cave, staged deco, and Trimix dive. Clearly none of that was executed properly, hence the bad outcome.

A.) Plenty of people knew Spivey was cave diving without a cave cert. Plenty of people knew Spivey was taking Sanchez diving, without any cert. ...
B.) We really ought to stop pronouncing that Spivey wasn't doing anything illegal. ...

As far as I can tell, all of that has been pieced together after the fact. The pictures on Facebook would have been seen by friends and family, but not by
the cave diving community. I haven't seen any posts on cave diving forums that made it known who they were or what they were doing. If you are talking
about the conditions reports on Cave Altas, that is not a forum and it was just a brief dive report that didn't reveal anything about the author or his
lack of training.

As far as Spivey not doing anything illegal, I still don't believe that anyone outside of his family/friends knew that the son was doing these kinds of dives. I agree that the father was endangering his child, but if the diving community as not aware of the son's involvement and the extent of the dives until after thier accident then it wasn't known that he was endangering his child. In other words, it would have been hard to call the police and say you think the father should be arrested unless you actually know specifically what was going on.

The NSS-CDS, NACD, IUCRR... should realize that the current attitude at the top, middle, and bottom and the current system in
place of displaying warning signs is NOT working.
I have put forward a suggestion in a post long ago and lost somewhere in this thread, and that is a "license" system, web based (non-governmental self-
regulatory system run by "Cave Associations"), where the diver before diving a cave has to fill a form, annex Cave C-card and Insurance, provide a "good-
reason" for wanting to dive that cave and in the specifics that portion of the cave.
"License" gets emailed back, and when you park your car you are required to display on the window the "licenses" for each of the divers.
No "license" - diver takes the picture of the car and plate and offending divers and emails it to NSS-CDS, NACD, IUCRR... letter goes out to the Sheriff,
Sheriff gets off his chair and knocks on the door of the "rule-breaker" and makes enquiries (especially if the cave is on public land and there is a sign
put there saying "NO OW DIVERS...").
Short of that, maybe we should all stop moaning on the internet about cave diving getting bad publicity and getting closed...
...and I don't buy nobody in the knowledge knew these two characters were doing what they were doing (and press reports indeed indicate otherwise).

Thank you for responding. I disagree that the signs, education, training, and other work that the cave diving agencies have done over the years is not working. If you look at the current death rates per cave dive and compare that to a few decades ago it is a very different picture. These agencies also have
limited resources and limited legal power. They can't be the SCUBA police for all of the thousands of caves in Florida. As far as the license suggestion, in this country a "non-government issued license" is basically the same thing as a c-card. You also can't expect the police to help you enforce a non-government license/permit. I'm not saying your ideas don't have some merit and I do wish that more could be done. I'm just not sure it is feasible to defend every dive site in Florida from people with such willful disregard for rules and even for basic morality. As an example, I would point out the father's criminal history. There are strict laws against drunk driving, but that didn't stop him from killing a pedestrian and driving away from the scene.

 

[HIGHwing]

As an important note. These two were diving far outside the standards of the cave diving community - even if you assume they both had Full Cave and Trimix cards.

PO2s pushing 1.7 during the working phase, a final END of 233, and diving beyond 1/3s are are substantial violations of the rules the community *lives* by. It's hardly necessary to point out any of those three items could be the primary or contributing factor to an accident.

Trained cave divers seek to minimize risk; these dare devils appear to have sought risk wherever they could find it.