Catalina Island fatality - California

[RHillcrest]

Hi Mr. Kurtis-

Can you provide any information on the equipment used during Patric's diving accident (Open Circuit, Closed Circuit) and any preliminary results of the equipment testing you or the coroner has been able to perform at this point that would help direct the direction of this thread for further discussion on why this accident occurred? Any learning points that could assist the rest of us in our future diving?

 

[bowlofpetunias]

Sorry you lost a friend DrBill :consolation:

At the risk of participating in a hijack I am going to wade in to this one.

First I will acknowledge I have a bias against saying too much too soon.

When a friend died diving with us we were told not to talk to anyone about it till the police had notified the family. We werent even allowed to use our phones at the scene to let our families know we were ok for some time. Not just her husband had to be notified but also her adult children, sister and family. Can you imagine how horrid it would be to hear via the rumour-mill that someone you loved was dead? That can and did take days as many families are spread around the world.

The police wanted our statements and separated us so those statements were as much as possible our honest memories and not tainted by discussion. We had second interviews to clarify things and it was clear pretty quickly that even people trying to be honest remembered things somewhat differently and interpreted them somewhat differently.

Once the family was notified we were reluctant to post information for fear of liability. The family seemed to be more comfortable with our actions than the A&I posters. No way were we going to risk directly posting something that might be misinterpreted and used against us in the event there was a law suit. Anyone who followed the Gabe Watson fiasco should be able to figure that one out. The Coroner took over 14 months to hand down their ruling. I certainly didn't feel like we were safely "off the hook" until the ruling was handed down and the Police returned the dive gear we had loaned her for the dive. I will stress the family really was lovely, supportive, we still keep in touch. Every single person who has access to the full story including the family, Coroner, Police and Independent Dive accident investigator has supported our actions before during and after the death.

Even providing information to individuals we trusted to provide it for the A&I thread discussion resulted in some information being misinterpreted and posted in a way that wasn't totally accurate. People had the facts but still choose to go off on their tangents and make accusations and create theories of causes based on their own pet personal theories.

IMHO there are too many people who fancy themselves to be Expert Investigators without the inconvenience of training and qualifications. All information needs to be compiled and examined before theories are created or the information is likely to be tainted as the focus shifts to fitting information to support the theories instead of the reverse.

There is value in A&I discussion provided people understand the difference between speculation of theories and true accident analysis. Speculation of inaccurate theories can still contribute to safer diving.

 

[Peter69_56]

As a comment. I watched a show on the human brain. What we think are memories set in concrete are not so. We do not remember information/data as a HDD does. Each time we recover data from our memory banks, our brain modifies the stored data due to ongoing exposure to life. Sometimes the effect is negligible, however surprisingly often it can be a significant change. We may swear what we are remembering is the absolute truth and fact, however scientific tests have clearly shown that our brain is great at modifying data to fit real ongoing life.

Hence I suspect why law enforcement and others like to get people as soon as they can to give statements, and not have the witnesses memories contaminated by others comments or thoughts.

Whilst we all want to get our head around each and every incident, we must respect the families and their feelings, along with ensuring we don't corrupt an ongoing investigation by our thoughts and comments on sites such as SB. Given the above info re memory, consider a witness who goes home after the trauma and giving an initial statement, to sit on their PC and read our comments and feelings on the incident, to then have to speak to law enforcement again at a later date, we may have quite innocently corrupted the witnesses memory of the incident.

Whilst I as much as anyone here want to know the detail from every incident that occurs, I respect fully the need to keep the investigation and detail private from the public arena until the investigation is completed.

 

[bowlofpetunias]

Yes and further to your comments I have been told that often the second interview after a person has had time to process the event often gives further valuable information. Some discussion between "witness/participants" allows them to process and actually trigger some valuable memories.

There is concern initially about people potentially "concocting a story" to hide something. We were asked the same questions a number of times by different Police officers at the scene. After they seemed satisfied we were not hiding anything and there didn't seem to be criminal activity we were allowed to return to our vehicles and drive to the Police station to give our Sworn statements. We were each taken to different rooms by different Police Officers for that part.

Later the Police diver in charge of the investigation called each of us in for further clarification of specifics comments. He also had specific questions he asked us and he requested our dive computer profiles to compare to the download they had taken from her computer.

The way the human brain works is indeed a fascinating thing. The Special Services Policeman did some training for us in the ambulance service on crime scene preservation and reporting. He said if you put 3 people in a position to witness an event and you film it you will get 4 versions of truth. One from each of the "witnesses" filtered by their personal experiences and emotional state and the once from the camera devoid of emotion. No matter how hard you try give a totally honest report... it will be effected by your "filters". Part of the human condition.

All of that said... I still think there is value in discussing reasonable theories as long as it remains clear that they are speculation. right now there is no information provided that we can discuss on this.

If any of the witnesses want to provide information anonymously they can always PM me or someone they trust to relay it for them.

 

[Ken Kurtis]

Can you provide any information on the equipment used during Patric's diving accident . . .

All I know is that he was diving on a rebreather, but I don't know what make or type. The LA County Sheriff's Department has possession of the gear and will take the lead in having it tested.

- Ken

 

[uncfnp]

And yet we have had other threads where those involved apparently chose to be up front and open to discussing the incident. Those threads seem to be frank discussions of events and to my limited knowledge and experience, never led to legal issues. Just the opposite, they preempitied endless speculation and suspicions of misconduct.

 

[serpentara]

I think that another non-negligible element to this particular incident is that it took place on a private charter, and everyone on board, including myself, were at least to some degree friends with Patric. The loss of a friend in a manner like this requires some processing. And the last thing you want to see when you lose a friend is a bunch of armchair divers/investigators opining that your friend was dumb/stupid/made mistakes based on broken, partial and fragmented data. We are all well aware of how nasty people can get on the net and how willing they are to make personal attacks against those they don't know. Imagine how that feels when it is someone you knew or cared for.

I 100% agree that we should take every incident as a learning experience, but it is far more valuable to get the information correct, so you can learn the RIGHT lesson, then to have everyone give their fragmented recollections and start a gossip storm. It has been just over a week since the incident, and it was so near to Christmas...

 

[diverrex]

All I know is that he was diving on a rebreather, but I don't know what make or type. The LA County Sheriff's Department has possession of the gear and will take the lead in having it tested.

- Ken

Ken,

My memory is bad but I think that must be at least 3 or 4 rebreather deaths in Los Angeles in the last 10-12 years. If I remember correctly we have 3-6 scuba deaths a year here. So over 12 years maybe 50-60 deaths. I'm doing all of this out of memory but if I'm close that means maybe 5% or more of scuba deaths in Los Angeles are on rebreathers. Maybe there is a whole lot of rebreather diving that I don't see but I don't think rebreather dives make up 5% of our total local dives. I know nothing about rebreathers so I am not saying anything about their safety. And I know the sample size of scuba deaths is relatively small. But the statistics of this I find interesting. Do you have the exact numbers of total scuba deaths and those being on rebreathers over a certain period? Any idea of what percentage of local diving is done on rebreathers?

Rex

 

[george_austin]

Bears Repeating, Thanks, Ken -

We apparently live in an era where ones worst personal offense to the world in general is to appear "judgmental" -
Making personal judgment and being discriminatory is not necessarily a bad thing as it's all abut the context - otherwise we'd all be driving through red lights and eating rat poison. JMHO

This is not meant to sound like a criticism, but it actually makes no sense IMHO. And this is something I've complained about for years in discussions with law enforcement agencies, insurance companies, training agencies, etc.

Discussing the facts of an accident educates the community, it doesn't hinder an investigation. All silence does is brew conspiracy theories wondering if something's being hidden. And while it may be policy for government agencies not to discuss on-going cases ("policy" is not always to be confused with "common sense"), there's certainly nothing to prevent anyone on the boat or who witnessed the accident from relaying info. I'd be curious to know who told your friend not to say anything because, again IMHO, that shouldn't have happened.

- Ken

 

[drbill]

I understand your thinking, Ken, but I also understood the need to keep information private at least until next of kin had been notified. I received a communication from one of Patric's friends who was trying to find out information about the death for Patric's wife. If, according to him, she was not being notified in a timely fashion, that did seem a little strange to me.