Emergency situations

[videofly]

I had my insta-buddy panic at about 30 feet on our open water dive in 1974. The water was very cold with limited visibility. She bolted toward the surface and I followed. I partially filled her horse collar and towed her to shore. I completed the dive and she remained on shore.

 

[boulderjohn]

I have been in the vicinity of two incidents during my more than 1,000 dives, but I actually did not witness either.

In the first case, a member of the group I was with evidently did not check her air supply and started the dive with a used tank. She went OOA about 5 minutes into the dive, calmly took her buddy's alternate, and everything was good.

In the second case, a buddy team near mine was in a cave and probably had an oxygen toxicity incident while on a rebreather. The diver's buddy inserted the regulator from his bailout bottle as the man went unconscious and took him out of the cave with a scooter. I cannot be sure of the diagnosis because the man very fortunately survived after evacuation to a hospital and information was not released.

 

[djtimmy77]

During the boat dives in my Rescue class some other diver on the boat (not in the class) got bent bad enough they had to carry him off the boat. He did two dives in Jupiter (80-90 ft) on air, but came up after those of us on Nitrox. His GF dove with him and was lucky enough not to get bent.

That is all I have seen in 350ish dives

 

[Redshift]

I have less than 450 dives and have been in 3 incidents.

One was an OOG diver with whom I shared gas. I have witnessed other OOG situations, but didn't need to intervene.

The other one was during my surface interval. Some kids were snorkelling in a small harbour and crossing it from one barbour wall to another. I noticed one of them (younger) was lagging behind, stopped to clear mask, called what I think was the brother who didn't do anything, for a moment laid on his back... and after the first signs that there might be a problem I warned a friend of mine and started zipping up my dry suit, picked up my fins and got to the edge of the harbour wall and then jumped in to help the kid.

One other incident was when a dive boat died on us and started drifting. Night came, the water was flowing over the RIB and we needed to be towed in. An after work dive and we got back at midnight. Some people were stressed, some people with mild hypothermia... How I like to use my drystuit even in the summer...

 

[diver 85]

We found him. I had to give him an air share when we were within 50' of the exit. He's alive and well today, I spoke to him on the phone about two weeks ago as a matter of fact.

That's very good news-------I thought maybe he 'bit the dust'(or water-- in this case......).......Very good work, UW.......He may be thinking you're his buddy--for life...

---------- Post added April 22nd, 2015 at 06:52 AM ----------

Dang--DD, what a memory----that brain of yours still works pretty good-----Sounds like you've been there & done that.....& as you have recalled, sometimes poo-poo happens......& have to agree with your assessment of the video--ie
LOA situation, nothing more.......

 

[TSandM]

I watched the video, and there are things I really don't understand. First off, why would someone stay underwater at safety stop depth until they ran out of gas? What I get from the video was that the diver couldn't pass the people above him, but the filmed was able to let go of the line and go hover near the LOA diver, so that implies current was not so strong that you couldn't let go of the upline -- and so does the fact that the diver DID in fact let go, and swam to the boat. So why hang out underwater until you run out of air? Have we done such a poor job of teaching the significant of a safety stop, that someone will die to do one?

The unwillingness to take an offered regulator is pretty weird, too, unless the diver didn't feel he could share gas safely. I have been involved in two LOA situations where I offered my long hose, and in both cases, the diver involved took it without demurral. In fact, the reason I switched to a long hose in the first place, was after watching a situation where somebody ran a bit uncomfortably low on a dive, and took an offered long hose to swim comfortably back to shore, rather than surfacing to a long surface swim.

I HEARTILY agree that the best way to deal with a problem is not to have it in the first place, and that recognizing the signs of stress in a diver is an important way to identify a potential disaster and try to head it off. But in this case, I think I might have been a bit more "in his face" about either going up or accepting a regulator.

 

[dumpsterDiver]

I watched the video, and there are things I really don't understand. First off, why would someone stay underwater at safety stop depth until they ran out of gas? What I get from the video was that the diver couldn't pass the people above him, but the filmed was able to let go of the line and go hover near the LOA diver, so that implies current was not so strong that you couldn't let go of the upline -- and so does the fact that the diver DID in fact let go, and swam to the boat. So why hang out underwater until you run out of air? Have we done such a poor job of teaching the significant of a safety stop, that someone will die to do one?

The unwillingness to take an offered regulator is pretty weird, too, unless the diver didn't feel he could share gas safely. I have been involved in two LOA situations where I offered my long hose, and in both cases, the diver involved took it without demurral. In fact, the reason I switched to a long hose in the first place, was after watching a situation where somebody ran a bit uncomfortably low on a dive, and took an offered long hose to swim comfortably back to shore, rather than surfacing to a long surface swim.

I HEARTILY agree that the best way to deal with a problem is not to have it in the first place, and that recognizing the signs of stress in a diver is an important way to identify a potential disaster and try to head it off. But in this case, I think I might have been a bit more "in his face" about either going up or accepting a regulator.

The guy was at 15 feet and well aware his supply was low. Perhaps he would not be able to dive again with that charter if he was exposed to have needed to share air? Perhaps it was not a big deal to him and he hung out and sipped his air until it got hard to breath and then went up? Perhaps he had a little required deco and want to hang?

It is kinda silly not to accept some extra air, even if it is simply to make sure your tank doesn't get water inside, but running out of air ... slooooowly at 15 ft while holding on a line should not be particularly hazardous.. Are we doing such a poor job at teaching that a diver can not make a free ascent from 15 feet?