Diver missing at Ginnie?

[Gone for diving]

We tend to get some decent information from the European accidents

 

[Norwegian Cave Diver]

First and most important condolences to the family and friends.
I don't know this guy, have read some of his postings and asked questions or contributed to his postings, and am a fellow cave diver. Thats as close as it gets for me knowing him.
I have read some posts saying what a great guy he was. Smart. Funny. Husband. Family man. Friend. Nice to read all of that.
Some people get angry with "speculation". But keep in mind that speculation isn't you or me suggesting that "is what happened" its just us trying to understand what "might have happened"
I also think that we cave divers/wreck divers/deep divers have in common is we are above average intelegence. We are analytical. Outsiders might consider our sport risky - but we see it as calculated.
People ask me what it takes to be a cave diver? I say it takes 3 things.. 1) Great quality gear - and thats just money. If you cant afford it then dont risk your life with second rate gear. 2) Great instructor(s). Self explanatory. 3) The correct mindset. In cave diving there are many things that could go wrong and that we expect wont happen and hopefully we are trained to manage those issues and are calm enough to work thru them.
If this should happen to me someday then don't accuse me of something until you know the real truth. But at the same time you are all welcome to speculate if you want. I wont be offended. My family knows what I do, but they don't understand what I do, because they are not cave divers. They don't know about SB or CDF and so the chances of them finding these sites and reading about what has happened or might of happened is very small.
Lets be nice to each other because we all give a s**t about our fellow divers.

 

[boulderjohn]

I also think that we cave divers/wreck divers/deep divers have in common is we are above average intelegence. We are analytical. Outsiders might consider our sport risky - but we see it as calculated.

I think that is true of many and perhaps most cave divers, but I don't believe it is true of all.

We have had talk in this thread of following the rules of cave diving. There are a few basic ones, and there are others that are more equipment dependent. I am a great believer in following those rules. I have never been truly afraid during a dive because I follow those rules and don't get myself into situations that would arouse fear. I think that is generally true of pretty much all tech divers.

But I think there are others who truly enjoy living on the edge.

I never knew the late Agnes Milowka. When she died, I read a lot about her, including her own web page, which is still up years later. I got the sense that she truly loved coming as close to death as she possibly could. There is no way in the world I make the decision she did when she died.

I recently concluded a discussion with someone who was on the recovery team of a fatality a few years ago, and no one could figure out why those two divers did what they did. I came up with a theory of a rational decision leading to a serious mistake which made sense to me, but the person with whom I was discussing disagreed. He said the two were yahoos who loved to do the most dangerous things possible, egging each other on, and they just charged into that fatal environment with no real understanding of the risks.

I am not implying anything about Andrew here. My only contact with him was minor interaction on social media, so I am not one to judge. I just note that some of the hints from people who know more than I talk about the importance of following the rules.

 

[cerich]

OK.

VERY IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER, WHAT FOLLOWS IS SPECULATION BASED ON RUMOURS

These rumours have been told to me by numerous people, none of them however could verify the rumour.

There is a very good chance that the rumours may be wrong, but upon reflection, and multiple discussions among some fellow very experienced cave divers and instructors the rumours, true or not, in this particular case DO in fact point to an existing, long running problem.

Let's quickly say the rumour and get it out of the way. That Andrew was on OC, solo, had done at least one set up dive staging bottles in the cave and on the fateful dive had switched to an oxygen bottle far back in the cave at the Ginnie depths of somewhere between 85 and 100ft. AGAIN, this is rumour.

Folks, we have lost MANY, MANY divers to bad gas switches over the decades of tech diving, we know this, we talk about it when teaching, heck we preach it. A bad gas switch is really easy to just throw into the "complacency kills" cause and move on. But it isn't that simple really. There are processes, standards, even regulations that have been put in place (Think EU and reverse DIN) that as a community are often dismissed, ignored, rejected and we are still losing divers. The inability of having consensus standards because of strong personalities often looking to differentiate from others in the market is killing people. Think if stop signs on the roads hadn't been determined by the Vienna Road Traffic Convention (stop signs, more than you ever needed to know)

If the rumours are true, I personally can't blame a period of inactivity as playing a huge role in the accident because we all, and certainly Andrew knew, to not breath Oxygen at depth. It would make no sense to even have it with him back in the cave unless he didn't know there was oxygen in it. That leads to tank marking and contents matching what was marked, if was marked. Those are big questions in my mind. Was it a mistake filling and not analyzed and caught? Where did the chain break? Because Andrew was smart, knowledgeable and while not super risk adverse, he was also meticulous and disciplined. I would like to see a good accident investigation, and if this rumour is true, it lead to some serious reflection on what we are doing as an industry that 3 decades into formalized tech training it's still happening.

 

[tursiops]

Unbelievable. The only reason I can think of to switch knowingly to O2 in that manner would be if that were the only gas he had at the time. Did he run out of back gas?
I cannot even imagine why one would even carry O2 into that cave, other of course than to stow it near the entrance.

 

[cerich]

Unbelievable. The only reason I can think of to switch knowingly to O2 in that manner would be if that were the only gas he had at the time. Did he run out of back gas?
I cannot even imagine why one would even carry O2 into that cave, other of course than to stow it near the entrance.

I and nobody I have talked to have expressed any knowledge of knowing overall gas situation. I can't make the leap to thinking that he knowingly switched to oxygen because I can't even fathom how he would have it with him there knowingly. The only time I am back in a cave with a bottle of oxygen is CCR, and he was apparently on OC

 

[kierentec]

OK.

VERY IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER, WHAT FOLLOWS IS SPECULATION BASED ON RUMOURS

These rumours have been told to me by numerous people, none of them however could verify the rumour.

There is a very good chance that the rumours may be wrong, but upon reflection, and multiple discussions among some fellow very experienced cave divers and instructors the rumours, true or not, in this particular case DO in fact point to an existing, long running problem.

Let's quickly say the rumour and get it out of the way. That Andrew was on OC, solo, had done at least one set up dive staging bottles in the cave and on the fateful dive had switched to an oxygen bottle far back in the cave at the Ginnie depths of somewhere between 85 and 100ft. AGAIN, this is rumour.

Folks, we have lost MANY, MANY divers to bad gas switches over the decades of tech diving, we know this, we talk about it when teaching, heck we preach it. A bad gas switch is really easy to just throw into the "complacency kills" cause and move on. But it isn't that simple really. There are processes, standards, even regulations that have been put in place (Think EU and reverse DIN) that as a community are often dismissed, ignored, rejected and we are still losing divers. The inability of having consensus standards because of strong personalities often looking to differentiate from others in the market is killing people. Think if stop signs on the roads hadn't been determined by the Vienna Road Traffic Convention (stop signs, more than you ever needed to know)

If the rumours are true, I personally can't blame a period of inactivity as playing a huge role in the accident because we all, and certainly Andrew knew, to not breath Oxygen at depth. It would make no sense to even have it with him back in the cave unless he didn't know there was oxygen in it. That leads to tank marking and contents matching what was marked, if was marked. Those are big questions in my mind. Was it a mistake filling and not analyzed and caught? Where did the chain break? Because Andrew was smart, knowledgeable and while not super risk adverse, he was also meticulous and disciplined. I would like to see a good accident investigation, and if this rumour is true, it lead to some serious reflection on what we are doing as an industry that 3 decades into formalized tech training it's still happening.

Whether all of these points are true or not for this specific incident, they still raise a few very valid discussion points which are known to be common in many cave and technical diving fatalities, as they are common practice which are even advocated by many cave agencies and instructors. It might be better split off into a different thread if found irrelevant for this incident, though.

1. Proper cylinder labeling (some FL cave instructors actually advocate to NOT mark stages with MODs and gas analysis tape and to assume any tank without markings are 32%(ish) nitrox

2. Solo diving (team confirmation of a gas switch is not possible if there is no teammate)

With as much evidence as we have (even with extremely poor accident analysis and reporting) that show both of these practices are common in many accidents, it is mind boggling that the industry still argues that they are acceptable. “Human error” while obviously a contributing factor, is not an acceptable end all explanation for this type of accident if known and effective precautions were ignored due to community acceptance (and advocation) of the unsafe practices.

 

[crofrog]

1. Proper cylinder labeling (some FL cave instructors actually advocate to NOT mark stages with MODs and gas analysis tape and to assume any tank without markings are 32%(ish) nitrox

What is your understanding of their rationale behind that?

 

[kierentec]

They say “to avoid cave trash” when a label falls off a cylinder. But it really comes down to pure laziness and bull-headedness. When I was becoming a cave instructor years ago, one of my evaluators actually refused to label his tanks when I asked him to.

What is your understanding of their rationale behind that?

 

[cerich]

Whether all of these points are true or not for this specific incident, they still raise a few very valid discussion points which are known to be common in many cave and technical diving fatalities, as they are common practice which are even advocated by many cave agencies and instructors. It might be better split off into a different thread if found irrelevant for this incident, though.

1. Proper cylinder labeling (some FL cave instructors actually advocate to NOT mark stages with MODs and gas analysis tape and to assume any tank without markings are 32%(ish) nitrox

2. Solo diving (team confirmation of a gas switch is not possible if there is no teammate)

With as much evidence as we have (even with extremely poor accident analysis and reporting) that show both of these practices are common in many accidents, it is mind boggling that the industry still argues that they are acceptable. “Human error” while obviously a contributing factor, is not an acceptable end all explanation for this type of accident if known and effective precautions were ignored due to community acceptance (and advocation) of the unsafe practices.

I wrote this yesterday in another forum, as more rumours came forward and I had more discussions, I can't help but feel that we need to look at this MUCH more holistically and challenge our assumptions and attitudes.

"After WW2 a bunch of pilots with good training, time and so forth from the war started flying around in private planes. It was a serious boom time in single engine aircraft like cessna, piper etc. Anyhow, controlled flight into terrain was always an issue (and still is) but after the war during this boom, it became massive. What perplexed the forerunner to the FAA and the flying industry is that the folks doing it really, absolutely knew better, had proven skills in bad situations and yet were doing it. So, some folks started to really study it, including asking around of the same types of private pilots if they had had close calls with CFIT and why. Most started with "I knew better but was in a rush to get there (aka get there itis), but then they started to pick up on pilots making comments like "so, I was in the clouds and lost track of altitude, speed or something. Anyhow, there I was trying to figure out what way was up etc and I kept on looking at the wrong dang instrument! It wasn't where I was used to from my xxx (x) hours during the war in my XX aircraft". So, they then started to experiment on the "standard T" where the instruments were placed in the same spot. Shortly after all the aircraft manufs. came onboard with doing the same on their panels and the CFIT safety record greatly improved within the decade.

I promise you however, that there was not "nothing to learn" but everything to learn from the bad outcome of pilots flying their aircraft into the ground, mountain, trees etc. People knew that broke the safety rules. In fact, early 2000's there was a spate of issues when general aviation got glass panels in some aircraft like the Cirrus, where people just did seemingly stupid things. Then better glass panel transition training and what has become fairly standardized."