Accident at Lake Rawlings Sunday 05/27/2012

[lsorenson]

why would you take students to a quarry with 20ft viz to do their checkout dives?
if no other options are available besides the quarry, why not limit the number of divers to Instructor to 2 only, so its easier to keep track of them? we had our checkout dives in cold crystal clear water and the ratio of student to Instructor/DM was 2:1

Accidents happen (how many children drown in a pool or tub each year?) but not all of us have the ability to go to a crystal clear spring or the Caribbean for check out dives...! You may not agree with the number of students on hand but visibility varies greatly from one location to another and day to day or even hour by hour!!!

FYI, Gennie Springs FL when I did my OW... Crystal clear for as long as you could see...!

 

[t4e]

T4e, you are trying to draw a conclusion from thin air....every differant agency is represented at Rawlings virtually every weekend. The deepest we will take OW divers is the shallow part of the lake(max depth 30ft). I'm sure you think you know the S&P's for the agency you were certified through, but in reality you are gasping for air here man. Leave it alone, we DO know what we are talking about here.

hmmm no. i'm not...but since you DO know what you're talking about, please do answer my question then...why was she in the water for 1.19 minutes with 900psi left in her tank...and please give me a plausible answer

Accidents happen (how many children drown in a pool or tub each year?) but not all of us have the ability to go to a crystal clear spring or the Caribbean for check out dives...! You may not agree with the number of students on hand but visibility varies greatly from one location to another and day to day or even hour by hour!!!

FYI, Gennie Springs FL when I did my OW... Crystal clear for as long as you could see...!

i said "cold and crystal clear", perhaps adding "35F of Ontario Lake" would have made it clear that is not the Caribbean

i agree that visibility varies but afaic quarries don't have good viz, except maybe in the winter

You seem to be confusing the maximum allowed depth on a dive with a required depth on a dive. With PADI, the deepest the students can go on dives 1 and 2 is 40 feet, and the deepest they can go on dives 3 and 4 is 60 feet. That does not mean they must go to those depths on those dives. They can all be done at 20 feet. At one training site in our area, you will need a shovel to go past 21 feet on any dive.

yes, i guess recommendations differ from agency to agency but they also recommend a certain maximum bottom time, which i doubt is past 40 minutes at best

 

[lsorenson]

hmmm no. i'm not...but since you DO know what you're talking about, please do answer my question then...why was she in the water for 1.19 minutes with 900psi left in her tank...and please give me a plausible answer

Heart attack? Hypothermia? Sever panic attack? or maybe 3 dozen other ways medically or not!

i said "cold and crystal clear", perhaps adding "35F of Ontario Lake" would have made it clear that is not the Caribbean

i agree that visibility varies but afaic quarries don't have good viz, except maybe in the winter

I noticed before posting you were from Canada and I never said you went to the Caribbean... It's was merely intended to express not all open water test are held in idea conditions... I am not real sure which would be better, cold water diving with a dry suit, thermos, 3 finger mitts and 100' of vis or 80 degree with 8' vis... Takes more training for cold water without question but I would rather be prepared for the cold and good vis than warm and blind... Hell, maybe this is a pi$$ poor analogy as well but I will stand by it!!!

lee

 

[tomfcrist]

hmmm no. i'm not...but since you DO know what you're talking about, please do answer my question then...why was she in the water for 1.19 minutes with 900psi left in her tank...and please give me a plausible answer

yes, i guess recommendations differ from agency to agency but they also recommend a certain maximum bottom time, which i doubt is past 40 minutes at best

Ok.....so where do i start? We have already told you in a few different ways that a one hour dive in 30' is not uncommon even with students. And once again the computer showed total bottom time...like until she was brought to the surface.....How do you know that the search to find her didnt take 45 minutes?

Agencies dont make recommendations for dive training....they make Standards and Procedures. And Im almost positive that all agencies are on the same page that as long as no decompression limits are not exceeded, there is no max dive time for a training dive.

Im trying to allow you to save face here man, but if you insist on making yourself sound extremely ignorant, then i will not try to stop you any longer.

 

[t4e]

Ok.....so where do i start? We have already told you in a few different ways that a one hour dive in 30' is not uncommon even with students. And once again the computer showed total bottom time...like until she was brought to the surface.....How do you know that the search to find her didnt take 45 minutes?

exactly what i'm getting at...perhaps something got lost in the translation or perhaps i didn't make it very clear...i have no issues with someone lasting 79 minutes on a dive
unfortunately it doesn't seem that it is what happened here

maybe this woud make it more clear where my question is aiming....so the instructor takes 4 divers out for their checkout dives
while they can't keep their eyes on them 100% of the time one would think that once in a while they make sure that the whole group is following
at some point one of the divers gets separated and its not noticed by anyone for an extended period of time, how does that happen?

At no time shall a student, in or underwater be left without direct supervision.

so in light of the above from Standards and Procedures , how does one end up with a missing diver during training?

Agencies dont make recommendations for dive training....they make Standards and Procedures. And Im almost positive that all agencies are on the same page that as long as no decompression limits are not exceeded, there is no max dive time for a training dive.

Im trying to allow you to save face here man, but if you insist on making yourself sound extremely ignorant, then i will not try to stop you any longer.

sure they make recommendations too, or suggestions is more appropriate?

SKILLS TO BE CHECKED IN THE FIRST OPEN WATER DIVE
Note: This first dive should be taken as an introduction to the environment
dive, therefore, the exercises done should be easy so that they do not put any
added stress to the candidate. This dive should be done in less than 12 meters
(40 feet) of water. Suggested bottom time: 30 minutes (25 minutes in cold
water).

save face, for what? but please enlighten me where is my ignorance?

 

[t-mac]

Does anyone know if there have been any factual updates to this story? I might have missed something scrolling through the 13 pages of speculation and insults.

 

[boulderjohn]

exactly what i'm getting at...perhaps something got lost in the translation or perhaps i didn't make it very clear...i have no issues with someone lasting 79 minutes on a dive
unfortunately it doesn't seem that it is what happened here

maybe this woud make it more clear where my question is aiming....so the instructor takes 4 divers out for their checkout dives
while they can't keep their eyes on them 100% of the time one would think that once in a while they make sure that the whole group is following
at some point one of the divers gets separated and its not noticed by anyone for an extended period of time, how does that happen?

so in light of the above from Standards and Procedures , how does one end up with a missing diver during training?

If visibility is bad, it is remarkably easy to lose your buddy. Turn your head away for a few seconds while your buddy goes a different direction, and that person is gone. I have seen it happen with a group of instructors who were trying to stay together. When that happens, you are supposed to follow a lost buddy procedure by looking for one another for a minute and then ascending to the surface. That works if everyone does it. If one person doesn't ascend, then there is a period of confusion as the rest of the team tries to figure out what to do. How long do we wait on the surface before beginning a search? (If you all begin to search too soon and the other diver surfaces, then what?)

You seem to assume that the missing diver was "not noticed" for an extended period of time. That is very unlikely. More likely is that the missing diver was missed almost immediately and then not found; the diver was being sought for that period of time rather than not being missed.

Let's look at what MIGHT have happened in a case like this one. The clue to why the diver was being sought and not found during that time lies in the fact that she was apparently found with 900 PSI and the regulator in her mouth. That suggests that something went wrong that caused her to die while she was still actively diving and not out of air. For example, a diver who suffers a heart attack might suddenly sink toward the bottom. A buddy who does not see this in the first instant will suddenly realize she is gone. A standard buddy search process will send everyone to the surface after a minute, but she will not go there herself. After that aforementioned period of confusion, that will lead to a search that could take hours and even days. The entire time that this search is going on, she will be lying on the bottom, with no more air leaving her tank and her computer continuing to function as if she were on an active dive. If she had not been found for 3 more hours, that computer would have shown a dive in excess of 4 hours.

It is therefore not only possible that a diver who suffers a catastrophic medical event during a dive will be found with air in the PSI and a very long dive registered on the computer, that is what is what will usually happen.

 

[tomfcrist]

i have no issues with someone lasting 79 minutes on a dive
unfortunately it doesn't seem that it is what happened here.

On the contrary, it seems that you do have a problem with it. see below......

fair enough you can't keep eye contact with your students at all times but...how do you justify the fact that she has been down there for 1 hour and 19 minutes?

And my more than adequate reply.

1:19 would have been the time from going under the water, to Dalelynn bringing her to the surface......nobody has said exactly how long was spent searching for her, and a 1 hour dive is not unheard of.

and your response

quite irrelevant from when you count the time

i'm sure 1 hour dives are not unheard of, but allow me to doubt that a brand new diver will last that long on one tank of air

ok, all good...but, at the checkout dives, at least based on the agency that we took our training with, there are depth parameters set for each of the 4 dives, and as opposed to what normal practice is to do deepest dive first, for the purpose of training the checkout dives are done backwards, shallow dive first and subsequent ones deeper

my understanding from reading the rest of the thread is that when the accident occurred they were on the second day, third dive so they should have been deeper than 20-30 ft, again this is based on the standards of my agency, i don't know what PADI's are

regardless of all this, the fact remains that whomever was in charge lost sight of the student for way too long

Nobody denies that the student was lost from the group during training.

You seem to be confusing the maximum allowed depth on a dive with a required depth on a dive. With PADI, the deepest the students can go on dives 1 and 2 is 40 feet, and the deepest they can go on dives 3 and 4 is 60 feet. That does not mean they must go to those depths on those dives. They can all be done at 20 feet.

see above concerning depths on training dives.

maybe this woud make it more clear where my question is aiming....so the instructor takes 4 divers out for their checkout dives
while they can't keep their eyes on them 100% of the time one would think that once in a while they make sure that the whole group is following
at some point one of the divers gets separated and its not noticed by anyone for an extended period of time, how does that happen?

It shouldnt, and in fact...that scenario didnt happen here either.....there were more than 4 students.

so in light of the above from Standards and Procedures , how does one end up with a missing diver during training?

those are the S&P's for ACUC. while you are pulling info from those S&P's try finding the definition of Direct Supervision in the same manual. I can tell you that NAUI will allow me to use a DM as a guide/direct supervision on training dives........in fact allow me to pull them from ACUC for you.

2.18 Supervision:​

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The act of supervise oroversee. There are several levels of supervision.These are:​

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Direct Supervision: to be physicallypresent and within an immediatedistance of the people or activitiesbeing supervised. If the supervisiontakes place underwater, to be inthe water and within an immediatedistance of the people or activitiesto be supervised​

·​

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Indirect Supervision: to be physicallypresent. If the supervisiontakes place underwater, to be inthe water​

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General Supervision: The personsupervising oversees the overallactivities, but not necessarily eachparticipant specifically and if theactivity takes place underwater, thegeneral supervisor does not have​

to be in the water


It is possible for ANY instructor to lose track of a diver in the water........it could be as simple as a stuck inflator during a touring dive. If you arent 1 foot from said diver, you will not be able to intervene. being 1 foot from students is not the intention of "DIrect supervision" in any agencies standards.......if it were the intention, then the student/instructor ratios would be drastically differant.

save face, for what? but please enlighten me where is my ignorance?

Save face because you are applying your personal opinion(uneducated as it may be) and trying to draw conclusions about the Standards of another agency......not to mention the fact that you dont fully understand the standards of whichever agency you were trained through.

 

[Pedro Burrito]

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A ScubaBoard Staff Message...

I'm going to reopen this thread. I got heavy handed about the moderation and I apologize. I ask, however, that you respect the rules for this forum and please be civil.

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[DukeAMO]

I guess what's especially sad and disturbing about this is that the instructor might have been doing everything by the book, and the diver was still lost in the water and died. We don't like to think about the possibility of that happening. We'd like to think that we're safe on training dives in particular, as long as everyone follows the rules.

So, that leaves us highly motivated to see if there's something that could be done better in the future.

http://www.lakerawlings.com/Downloads/Lake_Rawlings_Dive_Map.pdf

Can somebody tell us which platform this happened at?