Fatality off of Point Lobos, California

[TSandM]

One may sometimes wonder if these threads are of any use . . . after all, a lot of the time, the errors are obvious, and we can all say, "Well, I wouldn't do that."

Peter is now having his OW students don weight belts in the pool for every session, and shortly after entering the water, they dump them. (They would be terribly overweighted if they didn't.) They are also orally inflating their BCs when they surface, whether they are "out of gas" or not. Threads like this, that bring up issues in how people handled urgent situations, can motivate instructors to do much more to reinforce these lessons, and in that way, some good comes out of the sadness of losing a fellow diver.

 

[DandyDon]

Thank you all. Yes... It is time for Rescue Diver Training... and I hope many are paying attention to Just how easily and totally unnecessarily a person can die while scuba diving. Something I myself would NEVER had thought possible until this tragic incident. I agree... the guy obviously did not know what he was doing and clearly panicked BIG TIME! And that panic cost the life of my friend. Rescue Diver training coming up soon for me.

Hi Honus. Really tough news on your friend there, and I appreciate you joining SB and giving this report, second hand that it may be. I appreciate that this sad news is tough on your too, but wow - you actually quizzed the surviving buddy on why he didn't save your friend from his own mistakes? That's a heavy approach on the surviving buddy who surely must feel like crap.

You are new to SB & this forum, and I certainly welcome you to both - hoping we can support you somewhat in your stress here, but there are a couple of points in this forums http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/accidents-incidents/52701-special-rules-please-read.html that might need to be mentioned here...

(4) No trolling; no blamestorming. Mishap analysis does not lay blame, it finds causes.
(5) No "condolences to the family" here. Please use our Passings Forum for these kinds of messages.

I'm a little surprised at the direction that this thread has taken and must be misinterpreting something (I'm counting on scubaboard members to scorch me if I'm out of line here.)

Is the surviving dive buddy and his response to the situation being held responsible in some way for this tragedy?

If we are to take the facts as reported in this thread (which we don't yet know to be the case), a diver ran out of air, became panicked, did not ditch their weight belt and lost their life. These are not advanced diving skills or advanced rescue skills. This diver moved on another diver who also began to panic and did not ditch their weight belt either almost costing that diver their life as well.

There are a number of people on this board who have lost friends in diving tragedies. In some cases,there may have been true negligence like CO poisoning or unsafe boat procedures. Sometimes, the diver themselves makes an unrecoverable mistake by themselves, on their own, that they are responsible for. Gas management is simply one of those things. We can build devices to watch our air supply that will beep, vibrate or light up but in the end the diver is responsible. Perhaps it is all that we can do to just keep driving the message, “Monitor your air supply.” (...like parents telling their children, "Do not smoke cigarettes".) More training is always better.

If I perish in a diving accident and it is found that I ran out of air, someone will reference this post in this forum and point out that I didn't follow my own advice. I will be forced to own my fate. Whatever I was taught in my PADI course 30 years ago won't matter. I configure and maintain my own equipment so I own any gear failure. If I'm diving with buddies, it would devastate me to think that those buddies might somehow be held responsible or endangered for my personal failures.

Yeah, I think your view is more appropriate here. It'd been good if the survivor had ditched the victim's weights when the accident happened and the victim failed to maintain buoyancy, but first & foremost it falls on the diver himself to drop those weights if he can't save himself. If I screw up and fail to achieve or maintain buoyancy when needed, it'd be nice if my buddy saves me from my shortcoming - but first & foremost I should drop them if needed. As Dr/Inst Ken has suggested on this forum, yes - best to ditch them on the surface if possible, but if you can't make it to surface air, then dumping them from below is better than never. Severe injuries are possible from an uncontrolled ascent, but we can save you better from those than we can from losing your body on the bottom.

We normally think of panic as killing the person who panics, but in this case, it sounds as though panic killed the other diver.

No, I think it was the victim's panic that caused the accident. It'd have been better if either of them had dropped the lead, and I'd enjoy posting kudos to the surviving buddy if he had saved the victim from his failure - but it was the victim's failure, even based on this one-sided report.

Of it there was a medical problem incurred by the victim that caused the accident, we haven't seen that evidence - but even if that were the case, we can't blame that & the downstory on anyone else.

Yes, I'd like to see more rescue taught on the third day of an OW weekend, and I think it'd take a third day to cram that much into a brand new diver's initial training. The industry couldn't stand it tho, extending training time & costs for both the Instructor & students - and our overall loss rate for our sport is yet relatively low. My home bud & I drill on ditching our weights the first dive of any trip, to New Mexico's Blue Hole for practice or on a trip to Cozumel - wherever, every first dive. Glad to hear your Inst husband is drilling his students on that, and hope they continue to practice it.

I stopped by the NM Blue Hole for a looksee today and to visit with the nice lady who keeps it in operation with her little fill shack. and met a young soldier who was quizzing her for info in preparation for his first dive there. He was planning a solo dive to 84 ft, at altitude in a hole new to him - so I encouraged him to find someone else entering, and ask him if he could at least tag alone with their buddy pair. Not the best approach, but better than his plan.

 

[honusmiles]

Dandy,

You are entitled to your version of reality... and your own one sided opinions... and your defense of the incompetent dive buddy...
Your expressions seem to me to Miss the entire spirit of a Buddy system... Isnt the idea that we are 100% responsible for ourselves AND our Dive Buddy? Yes... my friend died because he obviously made some errors in decisions, and one the most important of those was the person who chose to dive with. I am not interested in blaming the buddy for his death.... He should have been watching his own air... obviously...

But you are mistaken, I believe to put forth this idea of "Well you are on your own down there"... Your point of being 100% prepared and responsible is well taken... But more than that.... Might we also not walk away from this Learning how important our responsibility as a BUDDY is... Perhaps rather than this harsh idea of 'I got my own back'.. and everyone else should too... I think it is important to take from this how a simple caring equip. ck and gauge ck... from one buddy to another could save a life.

 

[Jim Lapenta]

I know for a fact because it is required in all SEI OW classes that these few, again BASIC, rescue skills DO NOT require an extra day for checkouts. They take one pool session of about two hours and each one can be incorporated at the end of a checkout dive. Or right after the initial OW buddy/bubble check.

First - panicked diver at the surface. Buddy team distracts or tries to get the attention of the distressed diver. One buddy keeps talking to the diver, other drops under the water and approaches him/her from below. Drops weights, swims around and climbs the divers tank cradling it between their knees and inflates the divers BC while talking to them. If the diver continues to fight - push him away and wait for them to wear themselves out. Then the team can assist. Time to teach in pool - 20 minutes per team tops

OW - do this right after the 1st weight check while still in relatively shallow water and before the first dive. No big deal.
Make sure that all students have seen and done a removal of buddies weights while still on shore! And that they see each team doing it so that if there are different weight systems in use they at least see how they all need to be addressed.


Second - Supporting a diver at the surface and helping them get positive. Buddy or buddy team takes hold of diver that is having trouble staying up. Buddy/Buddy team fully inflates their BC's/ may drop weights as last option (they may need to submerge if they lose grip on diver). Encourages diver to drop their weights and inflate bc. If no air to do so encourage oral inflate. Assist in dropping if necessary and/or oral inflate their BC for them. Do not let go of diver until at ladder or on shore. Time to teach in pool - 20 minutes

OW - I do this at the end of dive two or three once CESA's are complete.

Third - Unconscious diver from depth. Buddy or buddy team determines diver is unconscious. Taking hold of diver under the right arm to allow right hand to hold the regulator in, rescuer assesses diver's buoyancy by trying to inflate victims BC slightly and swim them up. If no air then use their own BC. Inflate slightly to establish positive buoyancy direction and swim the victim up. Once at the surface drop victims weights. Inflate BC's and if necessary drop your own. Summon help as you tow them to shore- Time to teach is about 30 minutes and allow 10 minutes per victim to be brought up.

OW - Usually end of dive three or four. I will be the vic in open water. As I swim with the buddy team to the exit I will go "unconscious" and the team brings me to the surface. They are told it will happen at the end of the dive so watch for it and take action. No one has missed yet and they think it's a lot of fun. Most common reaction is "Cool, We get to try what we learned!" I have an assistant watching over us when we do this just in case. It's done in shallower waters (20 ft or less) and they are told the important thing is it's not a race to get the vic to the surface.

Fourth - rescue tow while stripping gear. This can be done in place of the tired diver tow and is more realistic and beneficial. Time to teach - 20 minutes

OW - End of last dive or we will go out and just do this as an independent exercise. And it's done as teams. I talk about individual rescue and do it in the pool but in OW it's more likely a properly trained team will come upon a problem than have one themselves.

There's 90 minutes plus a half hour in a two hour pool session to practice. And maybe ten extra minutes at the end of each dive on the surface.

I think keeping someone from dying is worth the little extra time it takes to do these. And standards require them to be taught in our (SEI's) OW classes. It is up to the instructors discretion as to when to apply them in OW.

 

[Bob DBF]

Is the surviving dive buddy and his response to the situation being held responsible in some way for this tragedy?

If we are to take the facts as reported in this thread (which we don't yet know to be the case), a diver ran out of air, became panicked, did not ditch their weight belt and lost their life. These are not advanced diving skills or advanced rescue skills. This diver moved on another diver who also began to panic and did not ditch their weight belt either almost costing that diver their life as well.

I don't hold the buddy responsible because he did the best he could under the circumstances, it is extremely hard to function in an emergency if you have not been trained for the situation and have no other emergency training to draw upon.

Today an OOA situation is an emergency, before the SPG that was one way we determined it was time to surface. The expectations and training for this situation made it a nonevent. Because of the minimal size and oral inflation of BC's (my first used a modified tire valve and was 5# or so of lift), techniques of weighting and remaining on the surface were continually practiced. Just using a snorkel reduces the buoyancy needed to float because you are not having to keep the weight of your head out of the water, not important unless you can’t inflate your BC quickly. It seems that having better, more reliable gear makes you safer, and it does, until something goes wrong and you realize you were never shown and practiced how to deal with a piece of crap.

My point, if I can get to it, is that SCUBA training is designed to quickly immerse you into the safe underwater world, the problem is that the underwater world is not as safe as described, and the training [-]dropped[/-] put off for another class to make it quick, is most necessary when the s**t hits the fan. May be I'm just Old School but any water training should be about survival, safety and after that comes the fun.

The ultimate solution in my SCUBA training, and later when I became certified was, "ditch all your gear and swim home". A lot of time was taken in the pool and at the ocean to have a problem, decide your course of action, and demonstrate your solution. I still don’t own anything I wouldn’t drop on the bottom when necessary.

I have had to drop my weightbelt twice, the first when I was young was iffy, the second would have ended badly and old Dandy Don would have found and posted on A&I. Over the decades I have dropped a number of other divers belts because the thought hadn't come to them yet. It is the one skill I consistantly practice; when coming out of the water on the beach I drop the belt, it shortens the life of the belt on the rocks we call beaches in NorCal, but it keeps dropping the belt in the front of my mind as an option.



Bob
---------------------------------------
I may be old, but I’m not dead yet.

 

[honusmiles]

No, I think it was the victim's panic that caused the accident. It'd have been better if either of them had dropped the lead, and I'd enjoy posting kudos to the surviving buddy if he had saved the victim from his failure - but it was the victim's failure, even based on this one-sided report.

Dandy
your words above here... you dont know what your talking about... by the time the buddy even noticed there was trouble my freind was already nearly unconscious.... Perhaps in his semi conscious state he should have released his weight belt, inflated both he and his buddys BC... and help calm his buddy into a more productive state... maybe you think he should have saved himself once he was unconscious... Diving is designed as a buddy system because things can happen where we need each others support. This buddy was NOT ready.. and because of that he panicked...

and that panic cost the life of my friend. Please quite making crap up... you did not talk to the buddy... I did... and NOTHING... he said made any sense at all...

 

[3D diver]

My condolences, but

1) the buddy did not cause the emergency

2) he tried to rescue the diver and only abandoned the attempt when overwhelmed by the situation and in danger himself

3) the diver may very well have died even if the buddy had done everything right

4) none of us were there

5) "forgive us our trespasses,
As we forgive them that trespass against us"

There is a lot to learn from the failed rescue attempt. But it was a rescue attempt and demonizing the buddy for it won't bring your friend back.

 

[DandyDon]

You were quoting me here, right? No, I think it was the victim's panic that caused the accident. It'd have been better if either of them had dropped the lead, and I'd enjoy posting kudos to the surviving buddy if he had saved the victim from his failure - but it was the victim's failure, even based on this one-sided report.

Dandy
your words above here... you dont know what your talking about... by the time the buddy even noticed there was trouble my freind was already nearly unconscious.... Perhaps in his semi conscious state he should have released his weight belt, inflated both he and his buddys BC... and help calm his buddy into a more productive state... maybe you think he should have saved himself once he was unconscious... Diving is designed as a buddy system because things can happen where we need each others support. This buddy was NOT ready.. and because of that he panicked...

and that panic cost the life of my friend. Please quite making crap up... you did not talk to the buddy... I did... and NOTHING... he said made any sense at all...

Uh, you jumped me for my post at 8:47am so why come back and do it again 6 hours later? I am not debating; I posted my view, saw your reply, and left it alone.

I've flown my pony bottle with me on almost all of my trips because of my experience with buddies. I don't depend on any of them. I did Rescue training with my home bud, and I try to ensure his safety within my capabilities, yeah - but I don't depend on him either. Then I screwed up with my pony, but swam out that one. Sure, do your best to help your buddy, but you'd best be able to save yourself.

Your friends death was horrible, his buddy's experience & stress from witnessing it had to be awful, and I guess you are feeling a lot of pain as well - but blaming the survivor is really just going to make it harder on you. Get over it or give up diving as it can affect your own safety.

Since you are new to SB, you may become confused over the posting timeline. Scroll up to your from this morning, then from there down, reviewing other opinions.

 

[Crush]

Honusmiles is discussing "how it ought to be" but DandyDon is posting "how it is." I'd love it if every diver was a skilled, attentive buddy with rescue training that practices his/her training regularly. But, having had varied and diverse buddies I have become pessimistic and expect the worst.

 

[cruiser]

Isnt the idea that we are 100% responsible for ourselves AND our Dive Buddy? Yes

Ideally, yes. Unfortunately, sometimes one diver can't save himself AND his buddy, so he must make the heart wrenching decision to not become a second victim.