KrisB:
New possible analysis, in light of this information:
1. the dive was completed, he signaled it was time to end it
2. they ascended (albeit, not within contact range)
3. he surfaced first, failed to become positively bouyant, and suffered an attack of some sort (cardiac, pulmonary or otherwise), and sank back down
4. she surfaced and he wasn't there, proceeded to look for him
5. found him within 2 minutes of (3)
6. resurfaced and proceeded to pull him to safety.
A lot of assuming going on here ... see below.
KrisB:
Would this accident have been preventable with better buddy communication? Who knows -- it depends on what sort of attack happened in (3).
Probably not ... again I'll explain below.
KrisB:
Would he have received treatment sooner with better buddy communication? I think that's an unequivocal yes.
But the relevent question is "would have made a difference" ... and the unequivocal answer is "you don't know".
KrisB:
Now, not to point blame here, but even if the only difference was 2-3 minutes, the statistics show that every second counts when it comes to the possibility of successfully reviving a patient. If it was a pulmonary attack, she would have been able to administer mouth-to-mouth resucitation even before making it to shore, decreasing that time frame even further.
Kris, it's tough to tell but it looks from your profile that you're a reasonably inexperienced diver. If you haven't yet taken a Rescue class, one of the first things you will learn is that it's as important for you (the rescuer) to assure your own safety as it is to do all that you can for the diver you are trying to rescue. After all, if you injure yourself in the process of trying to save that diver, you've just complicated matters greatly. And you won't be able to help your buddy once you get to the surface.
Another thing you'll learn is that in the real world things rarely happen as they are described in the book ... what the course really gives you is the tools to make decisions, often in a snap-second, that may or may not bear any resemblence to what the book told you should happen. Rescues are like battles ... as soon as the action starts all plans go out the window and you make new ones based on what actually occurs. There are rarely cut-and-dry answers to what is the right thing to do ... it all depends on the circumstances at the time the accident is being handled.
Based on what I know of the accident, I believe this dive buddy did exactly as she should have. She accompanied the diver until they reached safety stop depth. At that point she stopped and he continued to the surface. Neither you nor I know why ... or if they had the opportunity to communicate that this is what they should do ... but there are situations where this is a valid response. Seeing her buddy go to the surface, she had every reasonable right to expect he'd be there when she came up, and that making a safety stop was a reasonable thing to do for her own safety. At that point she would be in the best position to render any assistance her buddy required without endangering herself in the process.
It's easy to look back at something like this in hindsight and say "she should have done this", or "she should have done that" ... but when you're in a real-life situation, you have no way of knowing what the outcome of something like this will be, or often you don't even know what's really going on since you are limited to hand-signals and visual cues only. You can only act within what your training and experience dictate. In this case, as near as I can tell, she did everything reasonably ... as she would have been taught in a competent rescue class ... to assist her dive buddy while at the same time assuring her own safety so that once she reached the surface she would be in a condition to render assistance to her dive buddy.
As an aside, it does seem to me that you are basing your observations simply on the idealized guidelines presented in an Open Water text. The real world presents a very different picture, and while it is right to ask questions about different scenarios, I think it is very wrong to do it in this thread. It seems to me that you have been saying all along that this person's dive buddy could have and should have responded differently. The simple truth is that you don't know that to be the case. Based on what we know, there is no basis for stating or implying that it is ... in fact, having spoken to people who are a lot closer to the situation than you are, I would conclude (as someone who teaches Rescue classes) that she did everything she possibly could have, and did so in accordance with how she was taught to do it.
I think that taking a Rescue class and getting some real-world diving experience would not only answer your questions better than anyone here possibly could, but would give you a very different perspective on what can really be done in a situation like this one.
... Bob (Grateful Diver)
) while under water at 27ft (according to his computer) since it can be done in "with the strength/ability of an 8-year old." I'm a bit confused, is AR done while the victim is underwater or on the surface?
