Brockville man dead after diving incident

[brnt999]

Grenville County OPP say a 57-year-old man from Brockville is dead after a diving incident in Cardinal.
OPP said the man was diving with friends from Legion Way into the St. Lawrence River. Police said the man encountered distress after completing a dive.
Friends of the man said they called 911, but their cell phones connected with cell phone towers on the U.S. side of the border. As a result, the friends said it took them twenty minutes to connect with an emergency dispatcher in Canada.
The cause of death will be determined by a post-mortem examination.
Foul play is not suspected and a coroner will be investigating.

 

[Ayisha]

The Ontario Underwater Council is aware of this accident and has begun an investigation. If anyone has any information, please PM me or post here. Thank you very much.

 

[Scuba-dan]

Wow this really hits you, especially when I dive there. RIP and my sympathy to the family.

 

[ScubaSteve]

Terrible news overall. Always sad to lose a diver.

Friends of the man said they called 911, but their cell phones connected with cell phone towers on the U.S. side of the border. As a result, the friends said it took them twenty minutes to connect with an emergency dispatcher in Canada.

This is an issue I had never really thought of encountering. I suppose the fact that it took them 20 minutes to connect to someone in Canada means that there is no means of 911 in the US to "transfer" the call to Canadian 911. By "transfer", I do not mean transfer like one would transfer a call from extension to extension in an office but I mean to somehow notify the Canadian Authorities of the emergency....just thinking out loud really. It really is a shame to think that an event like this could happen and at some point, the person might have been "saveable" were it not for that lost 20 minutes......this may or may not be the case here. My comments are made to the general situation and not this specific incident.

 

[bolts]

Wow this really hits you, especially when I dive there. RIP and my sympathy to the family.

+1...very sad to hear.

I can attest to cell phones getting mixed up as to which tower to go to along the seaway, a very unfortunate outcome in this instance.

 

[elan]

Sad news, my sympathy to the family.

As for the towers. The problem with the towers is easy solved by turning the network discovery into manual mode. Very easy to do and helps avoiding this situations completely.

 

[Scuba-dan]

I dive that site pretty often. Its called the Conestoga. Here is a quick video of it. Its a fairly easy dive, not deep a little bit if current but maybe this time of year its stronger due to the water level so you could get some exercise out of it.
Wreck Diving the Conestoga in Cardinal Ontario - YouTube

Still doesn't change the facts that its pretty sad. The US is about 200 yards in front of you as it is a narrow part of the St-Lawrence. There are time where I can see on my phone a US network, move 2 feet to the side and then back on the Canadian network. I'll have to try what Elan said once I'm back there.

 

[sweir]

Thanks for posting the Video. As I remember it, the dive is really quite easy and that you can't really get below 25 feet. It is a safe dive, great for novices, although I imagine the water is probably near freezing today.

 

[t4e]

that is sad

the 911 service in US has no means of contacting their counterparts in Canada, that is also sad

 

[Stoo]

As I remember it, the dive is really quite easy and that you can't really get below 25 feet. It is a safe dive, great for novices, although I imagine the water is probably near freezing today.

The original post said that the incident occurred after the dive was completed. Assuming that this is accurate, it sounds like it's perhaps not a "diving accident" but more some medical situation perhaps unrelated to the dive itself?