Delaware Water Gap Mishap takes one life

[Jax]

If we take two statements as true:

"Mr Osterhoudt surfaced and began swimming for the shore" and
"the instructor swam toward him and noticed he was face down in the water"

then the embolism theory is very strong.

Someone on the board wrote that a person could embolize in a four foot ascent. Does anyone know if this is true?

If so, if Mr Osterhoudt held his breath on a roughly 10 foot ascent, he could develop an embolism very quickly -- is this correct?

Not a medical person . . . .

 

[BoltSnap]

If we take two statements as true:

"Mr Osterhoudt surfaced and began swimming for the shore" and
"the instructor swam toward him and noticed he was face down in the water"

then the embolism theory is very strong.

Someone on the board wrote that a person could embolize in a four foot ascent. Does anyone know if this is true?

If so, if Mr Osterhoudt held his breath on a roughly 10 foot ascent, he could develop an embolism very quickly -- is this correct?

Not a medical person . . . .

1. The lungs can you take only 2 - 3 pounds of pressure difference to rupture. 4 ft can do that.

2. The last 33ft to the surface have the greatest "RATE" of pressure change and thus are the worst in terms of causing barotrauma including lung rupture.

 

[ktomlinson]

I read somewhere that a british air force pilot died after holding his breath from 3 ft. Not at a computer this second or I would look it up. With that being said, I saw a guy hold his breath from 9 ft during a ditch and don session in a rescue class two weeks ago and nothing happened to him (why he was in a rescue class with his level of skills is a topic for another thread).

 

[bleeb]

Someone on the board wrote that a person could embolize in a four foot ascent. Does anyone know if this is true?

It's been posted in other A&I threads in the past that the record for an embolism is something like 18". There might have been a reference in the Rubicon repository.

 

[Chris3D]

With that being said, I saw a guy hold his breath from 9 ft during a ditch and don session in a rescue class two weeks ago and nothing happened to him

A lot has to do with the amount of breath one begins with. If you bolt holding a full breath, you stand a much greater change of over pressurizing your lungs than if you start with a 1/4 or 1/3 of a breath.

I do agree this incident sounds like it could have been an embolism, especially if the victim was, in fact, seen swimming towards shore (several reports claim this, but at least one only mentions that he was found face down in the water).

In my time diving, by far the scariest thing I've seen is the surface of the water. I was diving with a large guy who ran into some kind of trouble at 70 feet, grabbed onto me and bolted for the surface. On the way up, I gave him my octo, which he spit out. I checked his gauges, which were all fine, I stuck his reg back in his mouth, but he spit that out too. I tried as best as I could to slow us down, and I just remember the last 30 feet or so looking at the surface fast approaching, hearing the air whizzing out of my ears and breathing out everything that was in my lungs as hard and as quickly as I could.

I towed him to the shore and he was rushed to the hospital, but fortunately, had no lung injuries. All his gear checked out, regs were fine and he had plenty of air. All my gear was fine. Later, he said all of the sudden he just couldn't breath. It turned out, this was his first dive after about 4 years of not diving, and it was in cold water (November or December) and to 70 or so feet. I took this as a perfect example of the importance of diving conservatively if you're new, or if you're returning after some time away from the sport. He said afterward that the water temperature was a shock to him, and I just think it was a bit of overload and he got spooked. Had he made a few dives to a shallower depth to acclimate, the incident may have been avoided.

 

[2 Big 2 Fail]

There's just such a large component of chance involved that the range of circumstances with good and bad outcomes are all over the place. How many alveoli rupture. How much air is upstream of the alveoli to produce pressure and continue to leak. How badly and how large and how many bubbles enter the pulmonary vein. How many reach the left ventricle how close together. How badly they're frothed. Where they go. At what depth the air entered the blood, meaning how much it expands after it leaks during ascent. Some of the variables depend on where the individual's anatomy falls either side of "normal." Even the body attitude at critical moments that can determine where the air goes. You just can't tell until it happens. Which, of course, makes the instructor right when he insists on seeing bubbles all the way to the surface in OOA ascent exercises.

 

[maxnico]

Risk tolerance is a very relative thing with all respect for what happened.

 

[Standingbear56]

Just a little more of an update on the conditions. There had been rain the previous few days so the current was probably up a bit and the vis down. I am only a few miles from where this happened, and these were the conditions I observed. However, there was also ice on portions of the river, meaning that it was at the least cold. Even if there was no ice directly where they were diving, the fact that there was ice on some parts not far away from the incident brings into question the possibility of ice diving conditions. Not so much the overhead as there were indeed very large open areas, but the temperature, and the equipment problems these conditions could cause to any diver untrained and unequipped for this sort of environmental conditions.
Bear

 

[jar546]

Any further update or news on this situation?

 

[caseybird]

A recent article from the local paper. Well written and not speculative or sensationalistic:

http://www.poconorecord.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110418/NEWS/104180322&cid=sitesearch

No paticular info on the cause of death. The most interesting thing was to the "heavily redacted" park service report.

"Something happened during John's ascent. And that something is not clear because the documents the Record obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request were heavily redacted by the Park Service.

All that could be gleaned from the documents is this: When John reached the surface, he wasn't moving.

A scuba instructor, who noticed something was wrong, "reached John within a minute" and towed him to shore. Both scuba instructors immediately started CPR on Osterhoudt, who wasn't breathing."

Rest in peace.