Deaths at Eagles Nest - Homosassa FL

[gianaameri]

One must have a license to drive a car on public roadways. There are police officers on those roadways. There are other drivers on those roadways. Many of those other drivers have cell phones and can call the police and can easily report another driver if that other driver is not licensed. Hey, look at how many unlicensed drivers there are. Of course, we usually learn they are unlicensed after they have crashed.

Now, imagine there are no police or other drivers around. Who is to stop an unlicensed driver?

How is it different in cave diving?

Licensing divers may make some people feel good about how they are protecting idiots, but it won't actually protect anyone.

The license to drive a car is an interesting point of comparison.

Cave Diving is far more difficult and demanding, and yet some people like the Spiveys feel they do not need to get training from an accredited instructor and teach their kid (being only an OC diver) not just plain OC diving, but Cave Diving (with the sad results we see with this incident).

Makes no sense to me!

Generally we expect that for our safety all other drivers are equally trained and have a driving license, and yet some people (far too many) feel that it is O.K. to have people like the Spiveys do as they please in a cave and accept diving the same cave with them.

Makes no sense to me!

Police (at least in Europe) makes random stops and checks on the road to verify the driver has license and insurance (well before any accident) and catch out quite a few people with no license/insurance, and yet some people (far too many) accept that when it comes to cave diving there should be no checks in place and people like the Spiveys should cave dive just because "they want to" (when they CAN'T in reality and then pay with their lives).

Makes no sense to me!

 

[victorzamora]

The difference, in my mind, is that drivers are responsible for maneuvering extremely heavy machinery at very high speeds that typically endanger others add much (if not more) than themselves. Cave divers are typically just dangers to themselves. Plus, even at "high traffic" caves, traffic can't compare at all.

Also, more people die from car accidents in a day than cave divers in a year. Maybe a decade. The scale is DRASTICALLY different.

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[Cleavitt]

No need to get emotional and jump to conclusions as you have done in that post. I never stated that CAVE DIVERS knew that the kid was diving in a cave. I just reported the differing statements in this thread.

The video notes that one person states that they had been at that site "many" times.

Fair enough, but it sounded like a jab at those that are simply asking for a source. Also, I'm not really the one jumping to conclusions. I'm trying to get factual information instead of making accusations that seem to be based on speculation. If I seem "emotional" it's because I feel very strongly that accusing third parties of being somehow responsible for this accident without evidence is extremely irresponsible. In these situations, the family is often looking for someone to blame other than their loved ones. Lawyers are swooping in like vultures. Local authorities might be contemplating closing down access this dive site or some other dive site. Land owners might have seen this on the news and are rethinking access to a site on their property. The general public may be researching the accident to satisfy their own curiosity. Any of those people could google this accident now, or at some point in the future, and find themselves here reading what so far seems to be speculation that is stated as fact. The cave diving community works very hard with the resources available (this is a hobby for most of us after all) to educate people, place warning signs, maintain lines, and protect dive sites. Statements such as "cave divers knew, but didn't care until they died" can undo years of hard work. If it is true and can be proven then so be it, but so far I have followed this accident very closely and I see nothing that indicated that was the case.

As far as the video, yes they did at least a few dives in Eagle's Nest according to the family member and some otherwise anonymous "conditions reports" posted by the son that have been found by a name search after the accident occurred. The conditions reports were signed "dillo" or "Dillon" and can be found here if you are interested...

CaveAtlas.com » Cave Diving » United States » Eagle's Nest

I tried to read through all these posts. Lots of surmising etc... My one question is did anyone know these people? Or the other divers involved in recovery?

Nobody seems to have been involved in their diving activities outside of family and close friends. The fathers best friend has said he is "a diver", but he doesn't seem to have been joining them on their cave dives and I get the impression he was not a very active diver.

I don't think I have met any of the recovery divers involved. I'm sure others on this board know them though. They are active divers and known to many in the cave diving community. At this point they are probably not going to provide any additional information because they don't want to get wrapped up in any of the situations I listed at the top of this post and I'm not sure there is much else to share other than their own personal speculation. One of the recovery divers did know the family and is quoted in the news as having told the father more than once to get cave training. Beyond that, I haven't seen anything else about the connection between the recovery diver and the victims.

 

[boulderjohn]

One of the recovery divers gave a pretty good description of the recovery on another forum.

 

[Cleavitt]

@gianaameri,

To some extent I can see your point. I see common ground in some of your recent posts. Most of what you are suggesting is already being done at many different dive sites in Florida. In some cases the controls are actually much tighter. For example...

* Cow requires NSS-CDS membership, proof of cert level, and you must sign out a key at the local shop.
* Ginnie Springs checks every diver's cert level and uses their staff to check up on open water divers that appear to be gearing up for dives in the cave.
* Hart Spring had a guide system in place.
* Blue Spring (Volusia) State Park prohibits open water divers from carrying lights with them while diving the basin so they won't be able to see their way into the cave.

There are many more examples. For the most part, these system do help (although people have still bypassed the systems and died or caused issues). All of these systems have been put in place by cave divers and local authorities/land owners working together.

There are some challenges though and it's never going to be so perfect that it can stop people that are going out of their way to break the rules and to go undetected. The biggest challenge is that the same rules cannot easily be applied to every dive site.

* Some of these sites are open to swimmers, snorkelers, and open water divers because there is a basin of some kind. So a "license/cert" check in the parking lot is not going to work for those sites.
* There are thousands of these sites in Florida alone and each has different ownership. Some are on federal land, some are owned by the state, the county, some are in a city, or on private property. You are talking about hundreds of unique jurisdictions and trying to get them all to pass/enforce the same set of rules. Many of them probably don't care that much about passing laws to regulate what they consider to be a hole in the ground. They are trying to prioritize their resources.

It's not that it isn't a worth while cause. It's that the diving community has to prioritize and work with the resources and time that we have. This particular accident is not typical. The typical accident is someone not knowing any better and swimming into a cave with no training. That has largely been stopped in recent years through education, warning signs, and some of the rules you have suggested at the more popular dive sites. These days, accidents involving untrained cave divers are almost always people that knew the rules and bypassed them anyway. I don't believe that can every be completely controlled.

 

[Ayisha]

...The 15 year old child was not doing staged deco trimix dives in a cave. He was doing deep air dives in a cave. There's a huge difference. And some people in the cave diving community were aware of it. This has been reported...

...You keep insisting that people in the cave diving community were aware that the father was taking the kid on these kind of dives, but you won't take the time to provide a single link to any source. I have looked for actual evidence of this and I can't find any reports with anything more than vague comments like "I told him to get training" that make no mention of the kid at all. I would think that since you are a member of the cave diving community (as am I) you would at least take the time to share a link to one of these reports while you are taking the time to throw your fellow cave divers under the bus and portray the community in a bad light. Anyway, until I see a source or something more than wild speculation I'll just keep calling BS.

Cleavitt, do you think it's possible that the info has been reported to the NACD and Dive-aholic would know since he is the Training Director? Or that he might know about other reports that might not be public knowledge at this time?

 

[Cleavitt]

Cleavitt, do you think it's possible that the info has been reported to the NACD and Dive-aholic would know since he is the Training Director? Or that he might know about other reports that might not be public knowledge at this time?

That is certainly possible, but if that is the case he needs to state it more clearly in my opinion. It would also be important to know the circumstances, but even if that can't be shared for whatever reason the source of the accusations needs to be clarified. If for some reason he can't talk about it at all at this time, then he should probably not talk about it at all at this time. Otherwise, vague comments open the door to wild speculation and conspiracy theories that may be far worse than the truth and unfair to those being implicated.

There are a lot of people in the know on Cave Diver Forum as well and this same speculation was brought up and shot down pretty quickly. If you have ever seen the drama that can unfold on Cave Diver Forum because someone ran a their line in an inconvenient way for other divers, you will know why it's unlikely that something like this would be skimmed over by the same group.

 

[chris.evans]

One of the recovery divers gave a pretty good description of the recovery on another forum.

Sorry to have to post this, but can you share a link, transcript, screengrab, summary or anything useful related to that?

Posting only to say you saw new information on another forum maybe isn't the most useful to all the people here who have waded through 50 pages of discussion with little solid information.

 

[Texas Torpedo]

Sorry to have to post this, but can you share a link, transcript, screengrab, summary or anything useful to the people on this thread?

Have you read through this thread or at least the the first few hundred posts? I thought it was pretty obvious..

In case the answer is no, here is the summary:

Don't dive beyond your training... At any level.. ((Especially Cave Diving))

 

[gianaameri]

Have you read through this thread or at least the the first few hundred posts? I thought it was pretty obvious..

In case the answer is no, here is the summary:

Don't dive beyond your training... At any level.. ((Especially Cave Diving))

...and report divers who enter caves with no prior cave training especially if they are minors and especially if they do deep air cave dives - particularly if you are an instructor, a member of the Cave Organizations, or, more simply a trained cave diver (i.e. a person in the "knowledge").

Entering caves is a privilege, not a right, and sometimes it is a privilege in a privilege (as for me yesterday).