Deaths at Eagles Nest - Homosassa FL

[TONY CHANEY]

Thanks for the link, Tegg.

Good grief:


"While some might try and spin EN's ballroom into a "cavern dive", that's the last thing it should be called or considered.. This isn't Ginnie's ballroom.. Not even close..

I second your thoughts and thanks Tegg for the link. What I don't agree on and it does not really pertain to you but, for years I have wondered how in the heck they call The Ballroom an OW dive. It has got to be about the money!

 

[nimoh]

Yeah, we can't stop stupid people from killing themselves. But we should be able to stop stupid people from killing their children. As the parent of a 15yr old myself, I'd like to think someone would care enough about my daughter to beat the crap out of me if I were regularly putting her life in danger. Hell, my wife goes berserk if I check a text message while stopped at a traffic light with my kids in the car.

Haven't read anything about where the mother stood on all of this. I'm guessing she's been behind the mental/emotional 8-ball on this one since the age of 14.

I think that's the issue. You don't see checking text messages at a stop light as an issue, and so in spite of your wife flipping out, you don't stop doing it. Darrin Spivey apparently didn't see taking his son cave diving as a big risk despite people telling him otherwise, so he did it anyway. As it turns out, he was wrong.

 

[SanDiegoSidemount]

Seems to me that a big factor in this tragedy was the fact that friends and family were not even aware what these two were doing was so dangerous. Witness the fiancée's delusion that "The top thing on their minds was safety" and "They never pushed it."

On top of that, those who were aware how dangerous their activities were never thought to intervene. On the contrary, they were loaning gear to these two.

There's a reason 15 year olds can't get cave certified. (Or can they? I hope not.) They don't belong in caves at that age. The dad gets a Darwin Award, but what happened to the son is tragic.

 

[kwinter]

It also assumes that they're not so mentally incapacitated they neglect to check their gauges ... or comprehend what the numbers they're reading are meant to tell them. At a depth of 233 feet on air, it's quite likely they were so loopy they couldn't think straight ... and I imagine that the undeveloped brain of a 15-year old would have an even harder time handling that they that of an adult.

I think there's a good probability that they didn't turn the dive sooner because it never occurred to them that they should ...

Purely hypothetical, based on knowledge of human behavior. You're 15 years old and diving often with your father, who is your mentor and teacher despite not having the experience or credentials. You don't know any better, but you just think it's a really cool activity that your friends don't get to do. He tells you you're ready for an even bigger dive. Maybe even 200 feet. You're excited. You know nothing about deco or gas calculations because you weren't taught. You just put your faith in your old man ("old" being relative as I was diving before he was born). So you go on this dive and everything is great and your father keeps checking if you're ok and you keep signaling that you are because you're high as a kite on nitrogen. Or even if you're not totally narced, you're 15 years old and the last thing you ever want to do is admit to your dad that you screwed up and you're burning through your gas too quickly. You just don't want to let him down. But he keeps going because you keep saying you're ok. Then you finally realize that you're OOG. HOLY CRAP! Get dad's attention and he gives you his long hose to breathe while you both hustle back to the mound where you stashed a couple of 80s just in case. He might be panicking that it was a big mistake, or he might be angry at you for not warning him sooner. But those feelings don't last long because with you huffing like a locomotive, you drain the last of his tanks just before your both lose consciousness a few feet short of the staged bottles.

Fantasy? Possible? Probable? Unfortunately we will never know. They both screwed up.

 

[Bratface]

Many of the articles on the dive incident cite Spivey's fatal hit-and-run accident and sex-offender status as acknowledgement "that Spivey has made some mistakes in his life."

Father, son die in Christmas Weeki Wachee cave diving excursion | Tampa Bay Times

Interestingly take by his fiance:

Family members said Spivey and Sanchez had dived at Eagle Nest several times and respected the danger there. "The top thing on their minds was safety," said Holly King, Spivey's fiancee. "They never pushed it. Darrin loved his family and loved his kids and wouldn't risk anything."

According to one of the recovery divers...

Brooks said their dive computers and air gauges indicated both had descended to 233 feet and that they had run out of air — Sanchez first, apparently, because his father had deployed a long breathing hose that allowed his son to breath from his tank.

This story just keeps getting worse. I can't even imagine what that man was thinking. Obviously he believed his skills and those of his son were more than adequate for this dive. Shaking my head.

 

[Skittl1321]

Fantasy? Possible? Probable? Unfortunately we will never know. They both screwed up.

I have a really hard time blaming the 15-year old. In your scenario, he didn't check his gauge, which he was probably taught, and yeah- he screwed up. But he should have never been in the position where that screw up would have cost him his life. That was his father's fault.

But what if he didn't screw up: what if his reg free flowed? He may not have caused that. What if an o-ring burst or something else happened? There are lots of what-ifs.

At 15, with the internet, if he was truly interested, he probably could have found out a lot more. Or, he could have trusted his father (as many teens whose fathers are taking them to do cool stuff will do) and NOT EVEN KNOWN that cave diving requires more training than what his father had. Until I decided to learn to scuba, I had no idea there was such thing as a "scuba certification" much less levels of scuba certification. Sure, there are classes where you learn to scuba; but there are also classes where you learn to quilt too. It is totally unnecessary to take those classes. I'm a self-taught quilter with no problems, but I've seen on message boards people who are "scared" to try something without a class. I'm smart enough to know I would have problems if I was a self taught scuba diver, but if you have a trusted authority figure telling you that you are fine, you really don't know what you don't know.

Without a doubt- the entire incident (I honestly don't know if I can even call it an accident) was the father's fault.

 

[nimoh]

Without a doubt- the entire incident (I honestly don't know if I can even call it an accident) was the father's fault.

I think OW divers dying in a cave is as much an accident as certified drivers dying while driving drunk. People can get away with it right up until they don't.

 

[Anna G]

If everyone already "knows" it then why does this type of thing keep happening (Joe and Yessic immediately come to mind)?

"Everyone knows" that driving drunk can kill you (not to mention your victims), but it still keeps happening. There's no real cure for human stupidity/hubris/whatever you want to call it.
Sure, maybe the next idiot's buddy will think twice before snapping pics of an unqualified diver before he goes into a cave, and maybe the dive shop won't put up a wink-wink roadmap to access a cave, but it won't actually stop the next idiot from doing something stupid.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

I have a really hard time blaming the 15-year old. In your scenario, he didn't check his gauge, which he was probably taught, and yeah- he screwed up. But he should have never been in the position where that screw up would have cost him his life. That was his father's fault.

But what if he didn't screw up: what if his reg free flowed? He may not have caused that. What if an o-ring burst or something else happened? There are lots of what-ifs.

At 15, with the internet, if he was truly interested, he probably could have found out a lot more. Or, he could have trusted his father (as many teens whose fathers are taking them to do cool stuff will do) and NOT EVEN KNOWN that cave diving requires more training than what his father had. Until I decided to learn to scuba, I had no idea there was such thing as a "scuba certification" much less levels of scuba certification. Sure, there are classes where you learn to scuba; but there are also classes where you learn to quilt too. It is totally unnecessary to take those classes. I'm a self-taught quilter with no problems, but I've seen on message boards people who are "scared" to try something without a class. I'm smart enough to know I would have problems if I was a self taught scuba diver, but if you have a trusted authority figure telling you that you are fine, you really don't know what you don't know.

Without a doubt- the entire incident (I honestly don't know if I can even call it an accident) was the father's fault.

Part of the reason you take the training is so that you can learn what to do if those "what-if" situations happen.

What if his reg free-flowed, or an o-ring burst, or anything else happened that caused a complete loss of his air supply?

If you were properly trained, and followed that training, they would still make it out OK ... you PLAN for those occurrences, and if the boy had lost his air supply totally, his father would have had adequate reserves to get them both to safety.

A properly trained cave diver doesn't "end the dive with 500 psi" ... we usually have way more than that left at the end of the dive ... specifically BECAUSE that gas was held in reserve in case of a catastrophic failure.

That's the whole issue here ... an Open Water trained diver hasn't been trained for how to manage the risks inside a cave ... which is WHY you shouldn't go there until you've taken the training ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[lv2dive]

I can't blame the kid. He hadn't taken a class so he didn't know any better. It could have been that the son breathed more than he realized, or it could have been an equipment malfunction - all those things listed are reasonable things that could very easily happen, for which one prepares and trains WHEN THEY TAKE A CAVE DIVING CLASS.

I am not concerned about what-if's: If both buddies dive a third of their gas, or less, problems become inconveniences, not emergencies (as a couple of my instructors like to say) so there is never cause for panic about anything.

I have a really hard time blaming the 15-year old. In your scenario, he didn't check his gauge, which he was probably taught, and yeah- he screwed up. But he should have never been in the position where that screw up would have cost him his life. That was his father's fault.

But what if he didn't screw up: what if his reg free flowed? He may not have caused that. What if an o-ring burst or something else happened? There are lots of what-ifs.

If Dad had his fiancee convinced what they were doing was safe, I'm sure the son had no reason to question him. I totally agree with you WRT where the fault lies.

At 15, with the internet, if he was truly interested, he probably could have found out a lot more. Or, he could have trusted his father (as many teens whose fathers are taking them to do cool stuff will do) and NOT EVEN KNOWN that cave diving requires more training than what his father had. Until I decided to learn to scuba, I had no idea there was such thing as a "scuba certification" much less levels of scuba certification. Sure, there are classes where you learn to scuba; but there are also classes where you learn to quilt too. It is totally unnecessary to take those classes. I'm a self-taught quilter with no problems, but I've seen on message boards people who are "scared" to try something without a class. I'm smart enough to know I would have problems if I was a self taught scuba diver, but if you have a trusted authority figure telling you that you are fine, you really don't know what you don't know.

Without a doubt- the entire incident (I honestly don't know if I can even call it an accident) was the father's fault.