Unknown Cave fatality at Twin Caves, Marianna, FL.

[SamJ]

Thank you for this response. The diver becoming distressed was the source of the silt out and of course me trying to assist him did not help that situation. So if anyone wants to blame me, its fine. I am certianly questioning myself about what I could have done differently. Doug Ebersole has reached out and will be creating a report so I look forward to his feedback.

I’m so sorry for your loss and having to go through this experience.

Please know that many times there is nothing anyone could have done that would’ve resulted in a different outcome. Guilt is a normal grieving emotion. Once you’ve had some time to settle, I highly recommend processing this with a therapist.


I know from personal experience that therapy helped me process that guilt tremendously. They can help you logically get through a process that is inherently illogical, grief. There are also studies that show playing Tetris after a traumatic event helps with PTSD, dunno if it actually helped me but it felt calming in the moment.



If you need to talk my messages are open, and you have the support of many in the community.

 

[34109411]

@BonBon you don’t know me and I don’t know you but last year around this time I attempted to “rescue” a friend that turned into a recovery followed by prolonged resuscitation on the surface by another team and medical professionals. While our situations are different the best advice I can give is this. Don’t come back to this thread, don’t dwell on what went wrong. Focus on all you did right and most importantly talk to someone even if you don’t think you need to. Ignore all those that were not there.

totally agree just go bonbon take a break from this tread. No need to.

I am sorry for what happen. Be strong.

 

[kensuf]

@BonBon - my deepest condolences for what you and your other friend has lived through. I am jumping on the bandwagon and recommending a professional to talk to.

My best,

Ken

 

[RedSeaDiver2]

@BonBon - there is only so much that anyone can do in many of these situations - but you did the most important thing - you didn't make it worse by becoming a victim yourself, you obviously kept a cool head and did everything you could - nobody can ask for any more than that - so don't try to second guess yourself as it doesn't achieve anything.

I used to command fires - and to put it simply - sometimes we would win, sometimes we didn't - but we did what we could with the limited information that we had - and you can't evaluate your performance later with information that you didn't have at the time. Your situation was similar - you've got a distressed diver in a cloud of silt - and you probably didn't have much more information than that - and in the dark in a cloud of silt it is going to be very difficult to figure out what exactly is happening so as you know how to try to make the situation better.

As others have said - the most important thing now is not to become a delayed victim due to PTSD - because PTSD sucks. So make sure that you get all the help you need, don't be afraid to ask for help, talk to people, reach out to here who have offered to help, if you want to talk to someone outside the cave community then you can message me - I don't cave dive, and I live in Australia - or when I am doing my maritime archaeology project I am in Egypt - either one of those is about as far away from your cave community as you can get.