Condolences to family and friends.
I hope I have the courage to do what the rescuers attempted.
I hope I have the courage to do what the rescuers attempted.
Drowning at Lake Rawlings
- Thread starter james croft
- Start date
Please register or login
Welcome to ScubaBoard, the world's largest scuba diving community. Registration is not required to read the forums, but we encourage you to join. Joining has its benefits and enables you to participate in the discussions.
Benefits of registering include
- Ability to post and comment on topics and discussions.
- A Free photo gallery to share your dive photos with the world.
- You can make this box go away
Condolences to family and friends.
I appreciate reading all of the messages posted here on this site and the outpouring of concern for the families involved. I am a little put out by the comments made above from the other diver - I think it was a little insensitive to suggest don't lose any sleep over this........you must realize the lady who died was a mother, daughter and a sister who have lost sleep over the lost of their loved one. I ran across this site looking for pictures and information to find out just what happened and I was surprised to find all of the postings and I am going to let the family know about the postings so they can read them as well and hopefully it will help them to know what exactly happened that day.
Training is certainly an issue. Some Instructors jsut do not do a good job of teaching.
For example, I was at Rawlings yesterday. An OW Instructor from Maryland showed-up with 1 Open Water student at 4:00 pm. The Lake closes at 5:00 pm. The Instructor said he would get OW Taining dives 1, 2 and 3 done by 5:00 pm.
In my opinion, that student was getting short-changed. I don't think that you can't effectively do dives 1,2 and 3 done in only an hour.
For example, I was at Rawlings yesterday. An OW Instructor from Maryland showed-up with 1 Open Water student at 4:00 pm. The Lake closes at 5:00 pm. The Instructor said he would get OW Taining dives 1, 2 and 3 done by 5:00 pm.
In my opinion, that student was getting short-changed. I don't think that you can't effectively do dives 1,2 and 3 done in only an hour.
UnderSeaBumbleBee
Contributor
I think you misunderstand what wopsushi was saying don't lose any sleep over. It was most certainly not the death of a fellow diver. If you read carefully, it was wopsusushi that hauled but to get to the diver in distress and then went under to pull the lady out of the water.
He was talking to SEMO scuba about skills and improvement of them. He was talking about training issues and the like to a specific person aka semo scuba
If I were going to beat anyone up in this thread, it would not be Wopsushi who was under no obligation to respond the the lady, no obligation to set aside his dive plan to look for her, no obligation put himself at risk for her sake and did in fact get himself involved and did in fact find her and get her to shore.
I am sorry to hear that this lady did not make it. It is a shame that such a thing happened. Yes she was a real person of real value, but taking issue with someone who went out of his way to save her is really in bad form especially when you did not read carefully what he wrote.
Last edited:
A reminder to all.
From the sticky at the top of the forum...
"The purpose of this forum is the promotion of safe diving through the examination and discussion of accidents and incidents; to find lessons we can apply to our own diving.
Accidents, and incidents that could easily have become accidents, can often be used to illustrate actions that lead to injury or death, and their discussion is essential to building lessons learned from which improved safety can flow. To foster the free exchange of information valuable to this process, the "manners" in this forum are much more tightly controlled than elsewhere on the board. In addition to the TOS:
(1) You may not release any names here, until after the names have appeared in the public domain (articles, news reports, sherrif's report etc.) The releasing report must be cited. Until such public release, the only name you may use in this forum is your own.
(2) No flaming, name calling or otherwise attacking other posters. You may attack ideas; you may not attack people.
(3) No trolling.
(4) No "condolences to the family" here
It is important for us as a community to assess and discuss diving accidents and incidents as a means of preventing them. However, once emotions are involved intelligent discussion becomes next to impossible. If the moderators feel that the discussion is getting out of hand in any thread they may close or remove the thread, with or without notice."
In short, this forum is not intended for codolences to the family. They express feeling, but lend nothing to the discussion and can be stated in the passings forum.
From the sticky at the top of the forum...
"The purpose of this forum is the promotion of safe diving through the examination and discussion of accidents and incidents; to find lessons we can apply to our own diving.
Accidents, and incidents that could easily have become accidents, can often be used to illustrate actions that lead to injury or death, and their discussion is essential to building lessons learned from which improved safety can flow. To foster the free exchange of information valuable to this process, the "manners" in this forum are much more tightly controlled than elsewhere on the board. In addition to the TOS:
(1) You may not release any names here, until after the names have appeared in the public domain (articles, news reports, sherrif's report etc.) The releasing report must be cited. Until such public release, the only name you may use in this forum is your own.
(2) No flaming, name calling or otherwise attacking other posters. You may attack ideas; you may not attack people.
(3) No trolling.
(4) No "condolences to the family" here
It is important for us as a community to assess and discuss diving accidents and incidents as a means of preventing them. However, once emotions are involved intelligent discussion becomes next to impossible. If the moderators feel that the discussion is getting out of hand in any thread they may close or remove the thread, with or without notice."
In short, this forum is not intended for codolences to the family. They express feeling, but lend nothing to the discussion and can be stated in the passings forum.
Similarly, because of it's purpose, this forum is perhaps not the best place to refer family members to for information. If mistakes were made they will be discussed and the discussion may not be as flattering, as sensitive or as respectful as someone who recently lost a loved one may be ready to hear about the loved one or the situation surrounding the accident. Please use appropriate discretion after understanding the purpose of the thread.
Good Lord, that is exactly the type of training that creates an elevated potential for accidents among newly certified divers.
Personally, I am opposed to to instructors who do dive #1, then float on the surface for 10 minutes before doing dive number #2. It is time efficient but and may cover the required skills, but it denies the student half the potential time they could have gotten in the water and tends to make certification dives nothing more than one assembly line dive after another of demonstrating basic skills with little swimming, looking around, enjoyment or practice just diving.
Practice just diving under the instructor's supervision is perhaps the best way for students to build experience and confidence and this practice denies them that very important opportunity. On top of that it reduces the number of times new divers assemble their gear by nearly half before turning them loose as certified divers. How many times have you seen a newly minted diver confused about which way the reg goes on the tank? Doubling, or in this case, tripling, the number of "dives" done on a single dive does not help.
I saw it yesterday at Lake Rawlings, DA Aquamaster. I saw an Instructor from Maryland did OW Training Dives 1, 2 and 3 with his OW student in less than 60 minutes. I would accept 3 dives in one day, but this Instructor cranked-out 3 dives in an hour. I couldn't believe it.
I agree with you; that kind of shoddy training can produce poorly trained divers. And poorly trainied divers can hurt themselves.
The same Instructor I am referred to probably did Dive #4 with his OW student today at Lake Rawlings and he probably issued a Temporary C-Card to his student-diver.
And I do not have a personal beef with this Instructor. I am only posting because I saw this yesterday at Lake Rawlings.
I agree with you; that kind of shoddy training can produce poorly trained divers. And poorly trainied divers can hurt themselves.
The same Instructor I am referred to probably did Dive #4 with his OW student today at Lake Rawlings and he probably issued a Temporary C-Card to his student-diver.
And I do not have a personal beef with this Instructor. I am only posting because I saw this yesterday at Lake Rawlings.
blessed1...I am sorry if I have offended you with that statement, but I was there and delt with it so dont tell me about being insensitive....I live with it every day, I have served 3 tours in the god for saken desert and you want me to be more sensitive and maybe lose sleep over this incident? My feelings have gone out to the families involved and to all who were there that day.....again I'm sorry if you or anyone else has been offended, but please enough is enough lets learn from this and give it a break. this will be the last I speak of this.
Scuba-Jess
Contributor
MY heart goes out to the families involved. I grew up in VA and have been in this lake more than once. It's so unfortunate.
Similar threads
