More L.A. County fatality stats (Casino Point & others)

[merxlin]

First off, thanks Ken, these are great stats !!!

Second, Peter Guy poses a bit of a "backhanded" question, (and I'm not trying to start a huge debate here, no malicious intent). As stringent as the LA County program may be, (or not be), ANYTHING can happen to ANYONE at ANYTIME, ANYWHERE, regardless of certification/training. Accidents, bad decisions, bad luck and stupidity happen to ALL OF US, be it a scuba diver, (PADI, NAUI or otherwise), Harvard graduate or hair stylist. Plus I think it would be a bit of a reach in breaking down fatalities by Certification Agency/Education, I could be wrong here. In the end, yes, ANY information is helpful to us all, and I'm certain willing to listen & learn, and be that much better of a diver, as well.

I disagree about the intent of the question. If an agency is held up as a exemplary system, one would expect their fatality rates (by percentage) to be lower. If an agency is considered to teach at a mediocre level, you would expect their percentage rate to be higher. If statistics show that regardless of a divers agency affiliation they die at similar rates, perhaps the training agency is not the issue.

Of course then you get into how many dives an average diver from each agency does, the types of dives, etc. And as usual you can make the statistics say whatever you want.

 

[Ken Kurtis]

That OOA number would be interesting to know.

A DAN study released 18 months ago (from which I quote frequently) looked at 947 fatalties ovr a 10-year period. Of those, triggers could be identified in 350 cases. Of those, OOA accounted for 41% of the accident triggers. That's an appallingly high number. It also indicates that running OOA is FAR more dangerous than is being taught because there's no way that 41% of dives end up OOA. So you've got something that happens fairly infrequently (1% of the time . . . or less???) producing an inordinately high % of the fatalities.

How many were OW, AOW, etc?

Good info to have but generally not tracked.

Is there any correlation between the increase and the number of divers in the sport?

Unknown. The number of new divers (nationally) certified each year has generally been decreasing for the past five year sor so (DEMA study). And the key thing would be to know how many people actively dive. Certified doesn't mean active. Again, we don't know the denominator.

Has LACo seen a significant increase in people taking up the sport?

Unknown. Data not available.

Or, is it training? Or what? That's a trend that needs to be reversed.

Personally, I think divers trained, with the emphasis on on-line e-learning and the de-emphahsis of instructor interaction during the classroom/book phase, is not as good and thorough as it used to be. We teach people the right answers but that doesn't mean they understand the material. However, at the same time we haven't seen a marked increase in the number of fatalities. If my premise was correct, then we should see more fatalities and - on a national level - we actually see less (by about 10%) than we did ten years ago. But again, that could be due to people diving less frequently, dropping out of the sport more quickly, etc., etc.

- Ken

---------- Post Merged at 01:28 PM ---------- Previous Post was at 01:25 PM ----------

I am curious how the authorities determine natural cause of death vs other causes?

I'm not sure exactly (disclaimer - I'm not a doctor) but it's essentially looking at the medical evidence. I know there was one case a few years ago when the diver, who had a long history of alcohol and drug abuse, suffered from massive organ failure (non-cardiac) during the dive. It wasn't felt that any of the factors of the dive contributed to the death so it was ruled due to natural causes.

- Ken

---------- Post Merged at 01:39 PM ---------- Previous Post was at 01:25 PM ----------

I really wonder if any significant additional training would signficantly effect the fatality rate.

I want to think it would, if for only because you'd get more diving in a controlled environment. But even more diving on your own is better than no diving at all. However, experienced divers die and unexperienced divers die. In a non-peer-reviewed study I did of three years' worth of fatalities, I came up with diver error (including out of air) directly causing the death 69% of the time. So if we could dive smarter today, we could cut the death rate by 2/3 right now.

Question -- any stats on the fatality rate of LA County graduates?

No and likely too small of a subset to get any meaningful trends from the numbers. Just not enough people overall to make it statistically reliable.

Ken, of the fatalities, any common thread regarding training? In particular, how long had it been since they'd had a class/training prior to their incident?

Generally not tracked or not available. Of more interest I think would be not last training (the last formal scuba class I took as a student was in 1980 when I became an instructor) but last dive. We certainly see people who haven't been diving in a while go in the water, have problems, and can't prevent them from becoming fatal.

- Ken

 

[MaxBottomtime]

Agencies aside, many instructors make a huge difference in training. I watched Ken with a female student at Redondo Beach one day. She needed to get in one more dive before they went to Catalina. The surf was about four feet that day, OK for some, but dangerous for most. Ken demonstrated entry techniques without gear on and then reluctantly called it a day, having to make an extra dive at Catalina instead. Many instructors would not have taken the time to teach a student when not to dive, but Ken taught her what I consider one of the most important lessons. The best way to avoid accidents is not to get in the water in bad conditions in the first place. I see way too many divers who have not learned this lesson.

 

[boulderjohn]

Here are the stats for Los Angeles County:

MEDICAL COMPONENT AS SIGNIFICANT FACTOR - 39.8% (not always cardidac but frequently is)

But I want to hammer one home other point. When we look at fatality stats, regardless of where they occur, 2/3 of the time the fatality can directly be traced to diver eorror. And many times, that's running out of air. If we simply can teach oursevles (and our newbies) to dive smarter all the time, we could IMMEDIATELY cut the number of deaths by almost 70%.

While I agree that better training and smarter diving would lower the death rate, it is hard to see how it could lower the 40% of deaths attributed to medical conditions.

The DAN study that found that 41% of the fatalities were initiated by an OOA situation, the actual cause of death was almost always an embolism. Divers who went OOA followed that realization with a breath-holding sprint to the surface. That means that the actual death was usually caused by an inappropriate response to the OOA situation. To me this has the following implications for instruction:

1. Instruction needs to include much more on gas management.
2. Instruction already mentions watching your pressure gauge while diving; instructors need to do a much better job of emphasizing it during the training.
3. Instruction already mentions good buddy contact; instructors need to do a much better job of emphasizing it during the training.
4. Instruction does include air sharing; instructors need to do a much better job of emphasizing it during the training.
5. If the above is done, we will be much better off already; however, we need to do a much better job teaching how to do a safe CESA. I have already said many times (although usually in the Instructor to Instructor forum), that I firmly believe the instructional processes we use for CESA are not only ineffective, they are counterproductive. I actually believe that the instructional process we generally follow in teaching CESA may contribute to the problem.

 

[Kevrumbo]

Initial Reported or Observed Problem of Divers Brought to the Catalina Hyperbaric Chamber (1995 - 2000):

Buoyancy Problem: 12%
Air Supply Problem: 11%
Buddy Problems: 10%
Decompression Problem: 6%
Equalizing Problem: 6%
Pain: 6%
Uncomfortable: 5%
Environmental Problem: 4%
Equipment Problem: 3%
Medical Problem: 3%
Regulator Problem: 3%
Rapid Ascent: 2%
Fatigue: 2%
Rebreather Problem: 2%
Mask Problem: 2%
Aspiration (water): 1%
Panic: 1%
No Problems Noted: approx. 10% occurrence

Quote: Divers Brought to the Catalina Chamber
--Did They Panic During the Dive?
Panicked: 33%
Did not Panic: 42%
Unknown: 25%

Quote: Divers Brought to the Catalina Chamber and
Suffering From AGE/Drowning/Near Drowning
--Did They Panic During the Dive?
Panicked: 51%
Did not Panic: 19%
Unknown: 30%

Quote:Cases from 1995 thru 2000
Of 154 Divers Brought to the Chamber:
76 (49%) Recompressed:
43 (57%) of which were DCS related
33 (43%) of which were Air Embolism related

78 (51%) Not Recompressed:
23 (29%) Rule Out AGE
23 (29%) Rule Out DCS
19 (24%) Near Drowning
9 (12%) Drowning
4 (5%) AGE/DCS Refused Treatment Against Medical Advice

19 (12%) Full Arrest --Fatalities

 

[Ken Kurtis]

While I agree that better training and smarter diving would lower the death rate, it is hard to see how it could lower the 40% of deaths attributed to medical conditions.

Not to belabor the point but a smarter diver also gets regular medical check-ups which might reveal problems that are fixable &/or might indicate to said diver that it's time to give up diving before an underlying medical problem becomes the trigger for a fatal dive.

So, in that sense, diving smarter CAN lower the number of deaths due to medical complications.

- Ken

 

[Thiad]

Thanks for the information, Ken. It's fascinating to see the statistics. And I also agree with your take on the e-learning aspect. I did that for my OW but then sat in on the class. I was immediately aware of how much knowledge my instructor passed to his students - real world information that went far in preparing us for our diving future. Sharing those experiences is invaluable and go hand in hand with a better understanding of diving.

 

[Ayisha]

Regarding the possible prevention of fatalities due to medical reasons, in addition to not diving when having higher risk factors or pre-existing conditions non-conducive to diving, someone had asked on one of our local boards last year if diving could contribute to the occurrence of a heart attack that may not have occurred if the diver was not diving. This is the answer from Steve Schultz, a respected, knowledgeable technical diver in Ontario and past presenter at the Shipwrecks Symposium:

Of course! And that's often the case with diving accidents. So many of them are ruled heart attacks.

I'm not speaking about this accident, but in general, there are lots of heart attacks for a variety of reasons. First, lots of divers are out of shape. If you exert yourself at depth, or if you dive a poorly serviced regulator, you'll build up CO2. If you're stressed, you'll also build up CO2. The body's response to CO2 in the brain is to raise your blood pressure.
The end result is your heart is working harder and this may lead to a heart attack.

So, quite often deaths get ruled as heart attacks, and that isn't very useful information for divers.
Instead, it helps to look at factors that contributed to the death.
Was the diver obese? Out of shape?
Was the diver trim and streamlined in the water or was he working much harder than he should have been?
Was the diver wearing too much lead (over-weighted)?
Was the diver experienced enough for the dive or would he have been stressed?
Was the diver's equipment well fitting and serviced?

All those things are factors that contribute to increased CO2 and ultimately to heart attacks underwater, and IMO it's much more useful to look at these contributing factors, ie the factors that actually led up to the cause of death, rather than look at the exact cause of death.

​

 

[leabre]

Question -- any stats on the fatality rate of LA County graduates? Since the LA County program is often held up as the (a?) "gold standard" has there been any longitudinal study of:

a. How many graduates continue to dive?

b. Of those who dive, their dive history (i.e., tropical vacation, "active", etc.)?

c. Accident rates for all.

Questions, questions, always questions.

As an LA County ADP graduate I would like to know the answer, too. Many of the LA CO's I took the program with or assisted over the years has a small number of them that are prolifically diving still (since 2006 or later). Some haven't dived since completing the program or have stopped diving due to having children and other life factors and some have moved on to become GUE Tech2 divers (me a UTD Tech/Cave/DM). Some just average diving here and there. I'm not aware of any that have died while diving since I became involved but I don't know EVERYONE. There are over 200 dive buddies recorded in my dive logs.

Just my observation but I'd love to know if there's a concrete statistic.

---------- Post Merged at 07:45 PM ---------- Previous Post was at 07:26 PM ----------

It would be interesting to see data in the future on what agency/certs a person had but that alone may not be too meaningful. It seems like you'd need to know the dates of certs; logs for all dives to gauge experience; which shop/instructor did the training; and so on. What if the person is multi-agency (me, for example, I'm NAUI OW->Master, LA CO Advanced, UTD many with some SDI and TDI here and there). Tracking all that info may still not provide an accurate picture of whether the training was a factor or whether the person just let their guard down (on fully preventable incidents). Still would be interesting nonetheless.

 

[RonFrank]

Thanks for the interesting facts, and the speculation as well.

7 deaths in a bad year in LA? That's really not bad as its likely a top ten market nationally.

Zero is better but people make mistakes.

I like Johns instructional ideas. Unfortunately I believe that the class is taught too quickly. There is a lot of info that is taught but new divers can not assimilate it over five days of instruction. I encourage new divers to spend a month with the OW book prior to starting class, but most do not.

From the best number I can find scuba deaths in the US range from 100-125 annually over the past decade. That's safer than many activities.