Ginnie Springs diver missing - Florida

[tbone1004]

the point that I think we need to stay on in this thread is what @PfcAJ said and @rddvet and I have alluded to. The head of the IUCRR does not allow the recovery divers to talk and forbids them from publishing anything about certain recoveries if it doesn't fit the narrative. One of the Ginnie deaths a few years ago was a guy that was in my intro to cave course with me. The IUCRR recovered his body, but there is no report on their website, nothing that says Craig died, heaven forbid where or why because the recovery team was muzzled. Same with a slew of others. That's the point I'd like to understand, why does Ken not want anyone talking about these things so we can actually learn from them?

 

[tmassey]

The head of the IUCRR does not allow the recovery divers to talk and forbids them from publishing anything about certain recoveries if it doesn't fit the narrative.

Interesting. Is there any type of confirmation of this?

The reason I ask is twofold: obviously, to go from hearsay to something more approaching "fact" (or at least, from the opinion of a single diver to a larger consensus). But the other reason is this:

I assumed the driving force for silence was people connected to the *victims* or others with a vested interest (such as property owners). My thought was, "Well, if I were to participate in such an activity, one requirement of my participation would be that I would be specifically free to relate my observations." It might mean that I was never *asked* to be involved, but then I'm at least not part of the problem -- or the coverup, if you like.

But to be given an idea that it's the *recovery* *organization* that is involved in the silencing... That's a completely different spin. (And right now, to repeat: it's a single unsubstantiated opinion. But worthy of attention.)

I will have to do some research into this: is it true, and if so, what is the motivation? I know that sudden and unexpected deaths are traumatic, and rarely can one expect rationality surrounding such things. And I can understand if the IUCCR might not want to create barriers to being involved. But the only barrier to publication I see mentioned on a very quick examination of the website is that *law enforcement* might suppress the report, and it includes the following statement: "Bottom line is, if we can post the information, we will post it."

The other area is opening one to litigation. Not just liability: you might be completely outside of liability, but that won't be enough to keep you from being involved with the litigation. Having said that, I'm not sure that making the information *public* changes that, anyway: if you're the one who found the body, you're probably going to be involved no matter what you do with that knowledge. Does sharing the knowledge really change that calculus?

There aren't a lot of good answers. Only varying degrees of tough questions.

 

[Vicko]

Sorry, I should reformulate that, the key point there is put that gear on a truck and go cave diving for 5+ hours in your back yard.
The point is not that divers in Europe are better because they are from Europe (hell our most prolific rebreather/cave master instructor died a few years back the same way he killed a number of his students before) Cave diving in Europe is gated by many factors, the waters are freezing, the access is hard, the caves are murky and the cave community is non existent almost. You literally can't do a 5 hour cave dive around here in a afternoon or weekend, it's a multi day expedition usually across multiple country borders. So the divers tend to be much more experienced and dedicated, hence less accident prone.

 

[helodriver87]

One of the things I love about the military aviation community is that the accident report and safety findings always get distributed to aircrew. Always. Doesn't matter if it was your best friend that died in a crash, you're going to sit in on a detailed analysis of everything that went wrong, what decisions were made, where fault lies, and what lessons can be learned. Because as a community, we recognize that making mistakes, even fatal ones, doesn't make you a bad pilot or a bad person. It makes you human. And the safety benefit that the whole community gets from understanding what happened and filing it away in the back of their brain far exceeds the value of trying to unnecessarily protect someone's reputation after death. We lost a bird in Iraq a little while back that hit high tension wires at night. Not a single night flight goes by that I'm not extra vigilant for support posts or anything that could be part of a set of wires. Because I took something valuable from that accident that may keep me safe in the future.

We're terrible about that in the cave community. We use excuses like respecting the family, not speculating, not speaking ill of the dead, etc. Sometimes it's people trying to protect the reputation of someone they respected. Sometimes it's not making a gear manufacturer look bad. Sometimes it's just people enjoying playing "I have a secret". And everyone is worse off for it. It wasn't always that way. I don't know why that changed.

 

[kensuf]

the point that I think we need to stay on in this thread is what @PfcAJ said and @rddvet and I have alluded to. The head of the IUCRR does not allow the recovery divers to talk and forbids them from publishing anything about certain recoveries if it doesn't fit the narrative. One of the Ginnie deaths a few years ago was a guy that was in my intro to cave course with me. The IUCRR recovered his body, but there is no report on their website, nothing that says Craig died, heaven forbid where or why because the recovery team was muzzled. Same with a slew of others. That's the point I'd like to understand, why does Ken not want anyone talking about these things so we can actually learn from them?

Please make sure we're talking about the right Ken.

But seriously, I don't think Ken Hill is involved anymore.

 

[rddvet]

Sorry, I should reformulate that, the key point there is put that gear on a truck and go cave diving for 5+ hours in your back yard.
The point is not that divers in Europe are better because they are from Europe (hell our most prolific rebreather/cave master instructor died a few years back the same way he killed a number of his students before) Cave diving in Europe is gated by many factors, the waters are freezing, the access is hard, the caves are murky and the cave community is non existent almost. You literally can't do a 5 hour cave dive around here in a afternoon or weekend, it's a multi day expedition usually across multiple country borders. So the divers tend to be much more experienced and dedicated, hence less accident prone.

You're talking out of either your own very local-centric opinion or out of your ass. Have you ever been to France? There are guys doing 4+ hour dives in Ressel all of the time in one day. England isn't in Europe, but there's guys doing long ass dives there too. Whenever I've been in mexico diving with a friend that's a local instructor and we pull up to a divesite and he says "let's go somewhere else that's a dangerous group of idiots" it has 100% of the time been europeans.
You're wildly casting alot of dispersions but have nothing to back it up. There are bad divers and bad instructors everywhere. The crap that I've seen from French nationals (the speleo guys that are dry and wet cavers) is comical at best, and dangerous at worst. But I've also seen bad in the US and Mx.

 

[PfcAJ]

Interesting. Is there any type of confirmation of this?

Can confirm.

I don’t like it, I think it’s wrong, BUT I will continue to participate as requested because I can do the job and for whatever reason this stuff effects me a bit less than other people.

 

[PfcAJ]

You're talking out of either your own very local-centric opinion or out of your ass. Have you ever been to France? There are guys doing 4+ hour dives in Ressel all of the time in one day. England isn't in Europe, but there's guys doing long ass dives there too. Whenever I've been in mexico diving with a friend that's a local instructor and we pull up to a divesite and he says "let's go somewhere else that's a dangerous group of idiots" it has 100% of the time been europeans.
You're wildly casting alot of dispersions but have nothing to back it up. There are bad divers and bad instructors everywhere. The crap that I've seen from French nationals (the speleo guys that are dry and wet cavers) is comical at best, and dangerous at worst. But I've also seen bad in the US and Mx.

England isn’t in Europe?

Where the heck is England then??

 

[Joneill]

England isn’t in Europe?

Where the heck is England then??

Probably mixing up the EU and Europe -politics vs geography!

 

[rddvet]

England isn’t in Europe?

Where the heck is England then??

Brexit baby

I went with it. If I said it was or wasn't part of Europe somebody would've argued the point regardless

Even the Brits can't decide (yes it's an old article, but being used as a joke)
Is Britain European? | Weblog | guardian.co.uk