3 unaccounted for after a flooded magnesite mine 'Maria Concordia' dive in Poland
- Thread starter Hiszpan
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All terrible planning apart, I am trying to understand how none of the 3 divers managed to find their way back from that T area. They were not even close to the stone dam.
There was a continuous guideline from the main guideline to the T area, albeit the guideline was reported loose. There were 3 ways one can go from the T, one of the ways distinguished (wooden frame) from the other two, which were so distinct from each other like North from South. Even with no guidelines and no visibility, based on compass alone, one could find its way at least until the stone dam - the tunnel was 3mx3m with no other corridors.
Removing helmets could have been an instinct - trying to suck a thin layer of air by the ceiling is probably easier without a helmet scraping the ceiling and making it harder to plant your face to the rock.
Why remove regs from the tanks to purge the air and create air pockets instead of strapping them to you and leaving?
Why did Student 2 perish if he managed to bring stage tanks to them? He could have turned back if he could not find them.
All this sounds like a description of divers who completely lost their way out, apart from the fact they were in a tube. However, even if there was some panic and 'fighting,' there are signs of later cooperation for survival - purging tanks, dying next to each other, etc. The instructor has tried descending about 1 metre at times - was he looking for Student 2, who brought the tanks and was trying to find their way out?
More questions than answers...
There was a continuous guideline from the main guideline to the T area, albeit the guideline was reported loose. There were 3 ways one can go from the T, one of the ways distinguished (wooden frame) from the other two, which were so distinct from each other like North from South. Even with no guidelines and no visibility, based on compass alone, one could find its way at least until the stone dam - the tunnel was 3mx3m with no other corridors.
Removing helmets could have been an instinct - trying to suck a thin layer of air by the ceiling is probably easier without a helmet scraping the ceiling and making it harder to plant your face to the rock.
Why remove regs from the tanks to purge the air and create air pockets instead of strapping them to you and leaving?
Why did Student 2 perish if he managed to bring stage tanks to them? He could have turned back if he could not find them.
All this sounds like a description of divers who completely lost their way out, apart from the fact they were in a tube. However, even if there was some panic and 'fighting,' there are signs of later cooperation for survival - purging tanks, dying next to each other, etc. The instructor has tried descending about 1 metre at times - was he looking for Student 2, who brought the tanks and was trying to find their way out?
More questions than answers...
ginti
Contributor
Getting lost, even in a tube, is way easier than you may think if there is no visibility and you lose track of the line.
Instructor and student 1 probably lost track of the mainline when inside. Student 2 probably decided to help them, and in the process, he lost the mainline too. I am not even surprised about the idea of making an air pocket: I assume they tried to find the exit several times, and when they didn't manage, they decided to try their last option: wait for rescuers in a safe environment; the safe environment didn't exist, so they try to create one.
I am not saying that the solution is obvious - on the contrary, I agree with you that there are more questions than answers. But I am not surprised at all that these conditions led to such an accident.
What a terrible way to go.
The thing that is bugging me is that the theory is that they thought the entrance collapsed completely and they could not get out, and that is understandable. But diver 2 came trough it when he came back, and he did meet with the other other divers, they were using the stages that he brought.
I find it incredulous that a cave instructor was incapable of finding a exit out of a straight tunnel. I know that 0 vis diving is difficult and it's easy to get disorientated, that's why we have lines and training....
The thing that is bugging me is that the theory is that they thought the entrance collapsed completely and they could not get out, and that is understandable. But diver 2 came trough it when he came back, and he did meet with the other other divers, they were using the stages that he brought.
I find it incredulous that a cave instructor was incapable of finding a exit out of a straight tunnel. I know that 0 vis diving is difficult and it's easy to get disorientated, that's why we have lines and training....
ginti
Contributor
yes, but the instructor here totally neglected training and rules... this probably played a major role in both:
1) the accident happening
2) the way the instructor analysed the situation (knowing that he broke so many rules, he didn't have anything under his control, and therefore he might have thought that the situation was way worst than it actually was)
The instructor would be familiar with the poor vis, but the students may not be. If the student fled to the air pocket the instructor may not be able to take him away without a struggle and have no option but to keep feeding the pocket with air in the hope that the student would calm.
ginti
Contributor
That's the part I can't get my head around and that I find so terrifying. What could possibly have been going on that made it seem like the best option was to use all those tanks to feed that air pocket vs. trying to use them to get out (assuming those discarded regs were in working order)? Is the working premise that those discarded regs in the drawing were removed to feed the air pocket directly from the valves vs. purging the seconds? If so, I wonder if they did that when the pressure got so low that it got hard to breathe through a reg. That would require some really cool headed thinking though and I can't imagine anybody was thinking that clearly if that was the scenario. Were all the recovered tanks empty? The air pocket makes sense to me if it was created by exhalations and was only used as a last resort once they couldn't draw gas through a reg anymore. I could also see trying to use an air pocket to establish comms and discuss a plan to get out since the instructor's wetnotes were not near the air pocket, but again, that requires some pretty solid thinking to think to do that given all that had already transpired.
ginti
Contributor
Yes, I get your point, which is also the point of @O-ring and I believe anyone else here (me included). In the end, we can get an idea, but we cannot know for sure.
I remind you all that there was a line trap (see the report). Frankly speaking, I can think of only three reasons:
(1) the line trap combined with the bad visibility made the instructor think that the ceiling collapsed
(2) the line trap, together with the bad visibility, made think the instructor that going back was too hard (this is mentioned in the report)
(3) they spent a bit of time looking for the exit, and they started getting a bit nervous and panicked, so they tried for another option
Due to the conditions, I suspect option 1, but who knows for sure... If you can think of anything else, I will be "happy" to hear you (well, surely "happy" isn't the best word in such a context, but I am not a native speaker, I don't know which word to use here...).
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