Deaths at Eagles Nest - Homosassa FL

[oncor23]

From Wikipedia:

The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which unskilled individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly rating their ability much higher than is accurate. This bias is attributed to a metacognitive inability of the unskilled to recognize their ineptitude.

Dunning and Kruger proposed that, for a given skill, incompetent people will:

1. tend to overestimate their own level of skill;
2. fail to recognize genuine skill in others;
3. fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy;
4. recognize and acknowledge their own previous lack of skill, if they are exposed to training for that skill.

If only someone could have given the father a little bit of instruction...just enough so he would realize there was a lot more to this cave diving business than he thought.

 

[boulderjohn]

If only someone could have given the father a little bit of instruction...just enough so he would realize there was a lot more to this cave diving business than he thought.

Living in Colorado, with a dearth of caves at my disposal, I have never had the chance to use my PADI cavern instructor certification. If I ever get the chance to teach the course, that will be my primary focus in teaching the class. When it is over, the cavern diver will have a real sense of how much more there is to learn.

 

[seafox]

Very sad. Belated condolences to the family.

 

[jrutigl]

Are there really Instructors taking OW students to that site? With all the other options within an hour or two from that site for OW training....

Been diving for 52 years and am constantly amazed at commercialization of titles. Dive master at 50 dives. Instructor at what 200. Don't get me wrong there obviously some great instructors, but I've seen "instructors" and "dive masters" do some pretty stupid things. Over certification in a diver who has sub par skills is dangerous.

 

[boulderjohn]

Underwater caves open to expert divers, foolhardy novices

 

[ScubaDive4Me]

Looks like the Eagles Nest dive accident report is out. Is there anywhere online that we can find the official report.
Father and teenage son who died during Christmas Day cave dive ran out of air after losing track of time

 

[boulderjohn]

There is nothing new here. Its just a recap of what has been available for months. In fact, there were more complete and more accurate news stories published in the weeks following the accident.

In these cases, an investigation is done by an organization called the IUCRR. They send their final report to the police only. They used to publish reports on their web site, but they have stopped that policy because of liability fears. When the police are done with their investigation, they complete a report, but it is not usually published. If you want it, you have to request it under freedom of information rules.

This is a rare case in which pretty much everything needed to be known was known almost immediately. There really won't be anything new in the IUCRR investigation worth knowing.

The National Speleological Society does its own investigations and issues its own reports on cave incidents, including cave diving. Their investigations are not as thorough as the IUCRR's, but in this case especially it was thorough enough. It was completed in January. That report will be published later this year with the reports of other cave incidents.

 

[ScubaDive4Me]

Thanks Boulderjohn, good to know. I didn't get to read all the pages in the original thread.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[pauldewitt]

In these cases, an investigation is done by an organization called the IUCRR. They send their final report to the police only. They used to publish reports on their web site, but they have stopped that policy because of liability fears. When the police are done with their investigation, they complete a report, but it is not usually published. If you want it, you have to request it under freedom of information rules.

What aspect of liability are they concerned about? Im trying to discern what liability they are concerned with, but simply speaking, Im not familiar with the organization and what they produce. Do you know?

 

[boulderjohn]

What aspect of liability are they concerned about? Im trying to discern what liability they are concerned with, but simply speaking, Im not familiar with the organization and what they produce. Do you know?

The topic was debated hotly in relation to this specific incident in another online forum, the Cave Diver's Forum, which is where I got all my information related this issue.

The IUCRR (International Underwater Cave and Rescue and Recovery) is a volunteer organization that is called upon to rescue divers in caves and to recover the bodies of divers known to have perished in caves. Body recovery in a cave is extremely challenging and dangerous, and the divers trained for IUCRR recoveries are highly skilled in this process. They also take very sophisticated precautions to ensure diver safety when they do. They formerly did publish reports, as you can see on the site to which I linked. In the thread on the other forum, their director said they have stopped doing so for liability reasons. As I understood it, some personal information may be protected by law, and there is a fear that some misinformation in a report, no matter how minor, could lead to a suit from an offended survivor. Some people challenged that idea, but whether that fear is justified or not, that was what the explanation.

Ironically enough, the only reason we know as much about the incident as we do is because the IUCRR did not officially recover the bodies. When the two divers did not return home as suggested, local divers were called in to see what was going on. An attempt was made to locate the IUCRR leadership, but it was Christmas evening and things took time. Because of the size and depth of the cave system, this was a potentially major operation. IUCRR-trained divers were on the scene, and while they were waiting for the official process to begin, one of them decided to take a short dive just to look into the cave. He saw a body immediately, and they realized both bodies were near at hand. They decided the full safety precautions were not needed and recovered the bodies without the presence of IUCRR leadership.

When the press asked them questions about the recovery, they answered, not realizing that IUCRR policy does not allow statements to the press. Once IUCRR took over the process, there were no more statements.

---------- Post added March 25th, 2014 at 01:31 PM ----------

By the way, my feeling is that the concerns about liability in publishing such reports, real as they may be, can be alleviated with some care in the reporting. That includes being very careful about whether or not to include any information that may be sensitive, omitting anything that is not really needed, and sticking very carefully to established facts. On should avoid speculating on personal character traits and motivations. My report on this incident will be published later this year. It will contain no surprises. Anything that really needs to be known about this incident is already well known and has been thoroughly discussed in various forums.