2 Dead in cave diving incident.

[getwet2]

Dive
Propulsion
Vehicle

 

[smay28]

ok FNG question....What's a DPV?

Diver Propulsion Vehicle


This will come in handy...

http://wrolf.net/scuba_slang.html

 

[Kim]

Others will know far better than me - but I was under the impression that gas management using a DPV was supposed to be rule of sixths. Shouldn't that leave enough gas to get them out in case of a DPV failure?

 

[fgray1]

We don't know what happened and can't know for sure.
No one is left to ask. The news people don't know squat about diving so they guess. I just heard that his oxygen tank was empty.
Of couse they most likely had an O2 bottle with them for deco. But I have to beleive they ment his back gas.
Guess we'll have to wait till we get the info from a diving sorce.
Sad to hear when ever a person dies. My best to the families.
Fred

 

[MikeFerrara]

I may get flamed for my opinion, but perhaps it would be better if DPV's were prohibited in caves. Even if both divers had individual DPV's and one became inoperative, the additional load on the remaining DPV pulling 2 divers could cause it to prematurely exhaust its battery resulting in the same sort of tragedy mentioned in this thread.

Prohibited by who? Many of the caves we dive are just hole in the ground out in the woods and aren't managed by anybody.

When using a DPV gas management is different and battery burn time management is also an issue. Both can be done though.

 

[fgray1]

Prohibited by who? Many of the caves we dive are just hole in the ground out in the woods and aren't managed by anybody.

When using a DPV gas management is different and battery burn time management is also an issue. Both can be done though.

It's no different than any other dive. If you live by the rules.
You won't die because of it.
Plan your dive and dive your plan. It's just simple.
Still sad though.
Fred

 

[The Kraken]

Mike,
Point taken.
"Nevermind" . . . Rosanne Rosannadana

 

[The Chairman]

My heart and prayers go out to the families and friends involved.

Were DPVs a part of the scenario?

 

[BILLB]

I have many friends who are cavers. So far none have failed to return from their dives. This is again so sad. It should not had happened. Personal responsibility has many aspects. Those left behind need to be considered.

I cling to this notion, that all technical dives must be excuted perfectly. There are no margins here for errors of any kind. Books have been written on those who have made errors.

Human life is precious. This is so sad. Lets us live and learn.

 

[MikeFerrara]

I have many friends who are cavers. So far none have failed to return from their dives. This is again so sad. It should not had happened. Personal responsibility has many aspects. Those left behind need to be considered.

It's very sad. Since the cave diving community is somewhat small when there's an accident it seems we usually either know the diver of have a mutual friend so it hits that much closer to home.

I cling to this notion, that all technical dives must be excuted perfectly. There are no margins here for errors of any kind. Books have been written on those who have made errors.

I don't really agree with this statement. Much of the planning that goes into a technical dive and much of the equipment that's used is specifically for cases where things don't go as planned either because of a mistake or something beyond our control. A lot can go wrong on a well planned well equiped technical dive without it ever beeing close to a life threatening situation.

There does seem to have been several DPV related accidents in the recent past. Just off the top of my head, in the last year or so we had one at Little River, one at Roubidoux and this sad case. In the Roubidoux accident the diver (using a loaner DPV on a 150 ft trimix cave dive) ran himself out of gas and then air shring was botched. The little river accident envolved a siltout and a delay to exit causing team seperation with one diver not having the gas needed to get out.

Some feel there's a trend here. At one time it was only non cave trained divers who died in caves. That's not true anymore.