Cave fatality - La Mescla, France

[beester]

Well to counteract the cliché... one of my best diving buddies is from Russia, and he is very risk averse (in diving).

PS I recognise red sea explorers and the MV Tala (the ship) in the video... Dived with them a couple of times... good outfit! And then you see Kirill and realize it's a GUE promo video.

 

[michael-fisch]

translated from France Bleu website:
More than 24 hours after the accident that remains at this time, the body of the caver-diver who died Friday in a cavity near Malaussène, could be raised to the surface. Upon the announcement of the death of this experienced diver and appreciated in the environment, the most experienced volunteers of the French Federation of Speleology were called in reinforcement. They arrived from all over France this Saturday morning.
An operation more than 200 meters deep

The operation with the gendarmes of the fluvial brigade and the company of Puget-Théniers started around 15h. A ground team remained in permanent contact with the team who plunged underground to fetch the body more than 200 meters deep. This site near Malaussène is considered highly technical and only a few divers-speleologists can venture there.

Friday, there were three and for a reason that the investigation, opened by the parquet of Nice, will have to determine, one of the three was victim of an incident. His two companions first tried to rescue him. But they finally regained the surface to give the alert. They were both interviewed as part of the investigation on Sunday morning. The autopsy of the body in the coming days should allow to know more.

Michael

 

[michael-fisch]

BTW the latest map I saw of that cave lists max depth after the restriction of 134M+, so 200M is really brass balls territory.

Michael

 

[dmaziuk]

I used to work as a guide in the Red Sea. We were always a bit nervous when we had Russian or Eastern European divers on the boat, because they had a tendency to get themselves into trouble due to a more risk friendly and macho attitude (e.g. very deep air diving).

Part of the problem in Egypt in particular is it was the nearest vacation destination for people who were a) suddenly allowed out and b) made a lot of money fast, usually in borderline-to-not-at-all legal ways. This is like having Lucky Luciano coming out to Havana on vacation, telling the dive op "I give you thousand bucks to take me diving, capisce?" -- and they tell him diving is a risky business.

There's bona fide adrenaline junkies like that math guy and his girlfriend in Tahiti, too, but Egypt got disproportionally more of the "more money than sense" types in the early 2000s.

(Edit: and by "illegal" I mean when there is no legal framework governing private enterprise, any kind of private enterprise is technically not legal. So private businessmen had to find "protection" elsewhere; it's not like everybody's a career criminal Russian mafioso.)

 

[Ayisha]

...And then you see Kirill and realize it's a GUE promo video.

And Bob Sherwood quite prominently.

 

[richied]

And Bob Sherwood quite prominently.

That's JJ in the very first shot. Lol. This same lady produced the USS Atlanta documentary that was on Netflix recently with a team if GUE Divers.