Lessons Most frightening moments

After seeing how the post I wrote about the reverse block resonated with people, I would like to make another post today, namely about the most frightening moments I've ever had.

It's easy, particularly for novice divers, to think that people like myself, with decades of experience, thousands of dives and a deck of c-cards have everything under control and nothing bad ever happens.

I wrote about the reverse block because of that. I wanted to show that I am still human and I can still make mistakes. On the internet there is a strong tendency for (technical) divers and instructors with a lot of experience to project an image of themselves as always solving problems correctly, always making the best decisions, and in the case of instructors in particular, having a monopoly on good ideas that lead to perfect students diving perfectly.

None of that, of course, reflects reality at all.

So I will start. I urge experienced divers to share their own stories.

-------
First
-------
1985. I was certified as AOW and we were making a deep dive along a wall. The bottom, for all intents and purposes, at the bottom of the wall was unsurvivable. A diver who diving with a group slightly ahead of us got caught in a large ball of discarded fishing line that he didn't see. He started sinking. The incident started at 42 meters. My buddy and I had just started our dive and we saw this happening. Nobody in his group did. We went after him. This was the first time I had dived deeper than 42 meters. I couldn't tell how deep we were when we caught him because the (analogue) depth gauge I was using was pinned at its maximum depth. This was also my first deco dive or at least my first dive where I was "off the tables" and unable to to know how to ascend. I was, at that time, unaware of oxygen toxicity, gas management and ascent protocols. We returned (at a rapid pace) to 30ft. (10m) and waited there until our tanks were empty on the assumption that any damage done by our deep incursion would be fixed by that. Upon surfacing we didn't know if we were going to get the bends or not. I was, frankly, scared. It still gives me the heebiejeebies to think about this incident more than 30 years later. We did something there that was completely out of control (also the rescue) and we got off easy.

-----------
Second
-----------
2002, I think. I was working as a DM. We temporarily lost a diver during a dive. The situation was that we were on a platform at 25m and doing some exercises for the AOW (deep) dive. A group of divers (maybe 6) descending LANDED on us and kicked up so much silt in their attempts to slow down before impacting the bottom that the visibility went from 5m to black-out in a matter of seconds. I grabbed the two divers right in front of me and dragged them out of the silt cloud. One of them turned out to be our diver and the other one turned out to be one of the idiots who landed on us. We were missing a diver. We surfaced. Naturally our divers were told to surface if they became separated but this diver did not. He remained where he was and waited to be rescued. On the surface we decided that I would search for the missing diver because I had the most experience of everyone (including the instructor). At that point I was a DM but I was already technically trained. I had very limited time. I went back down and eventually found him but it was luck. He survived and my beard got grayer overnight. If I couldn't have found him in the next 5 min his death would have been on my conscience until I died. This was so frightening to me that I nearly abandoned all plans I had to become an instructor.

-----------
Third
-----------
The accident. My team saved the life of a diver who ran out of air during an AOW training dive (by another group, not mine) and was left for dead on the bottom at 18m. We acted quickly and professionally and got him into the hands of paramedics within about 10 min. As an aside, the fact that the Dutch paramedics were able to be on scene so quickly was no small part of this! He looked dead when we retrieved him. He lay in coma for several weeks after the incident. Doctors had basically written him off when -- unexpectedly to all -- he woke up and subsequently made a reasonable (albeit not full) recovery.

The impact on myself and on the members of my team was substantial, particularly because of what we viewed as our 'mistakes'. One diver (the DM) stopped diving. He started hyperventilating during the descent to find the "body" and after that he started to hyperventilate on EVERY dive. He stopped diving.

To me it changed EVERYTHING about how I view training and my role as an instructor. I didn't organize things on the surface as well as I could have, if I had had a second run at it. Yes, I had the EMS on site in 10 min. Police, paramedics, trauma doctor, helicopter, fire department with a boat, a private boat.... all of that I had..... but I was overwhelmed and not communicating as well as I could.

Someone tried to chase my (uncertified) OW students into the water to go search. He didn't know that they were uncertified and I ripped him a new one in a way that I regret, giving in to the emotion. An NOB (CMAS) instructor showed me by example how to control the dive site in a way I had never learned, I missed seeing a diver (the DM who caused the accident) displaying passive panic. It only became apparent to me when they had to take him away by ambulance when he collapsed.... it was MUCH more messy scene than I had ever imagined and I was not in control as well as I would expect from myself. At one point, once the EMS had control of the surface situation I grabbed another diver (a DM) and went searching myself. This was a mistake. I can't get over the mind set that drove me to ACT when I SHOULD have been coordinating! I'm like the guy who charges into a burning building because I can't fight the urge to DO SOMETHING! I HATE that about myself.

Since that time (it's been years) I've been replaying that event in my mind and thinking, "if I had only done XXXX then YYYY". It drives me CRAZY to think that if we were sharper we could have found him 30 seconds or a minute earlier and his recovery could have been better. The fact that he survived is utterly astounding. These things never end like that.... but I feel responsible for the fact that it took so long.

This was a formative moment in my diving. I considered stopping as well but eventually decided not not to. To this day I cannot -- and will not -- teach or participate in the Rescue course, even though I may be the one instructor in my circle who is most qualified to talk about the differences between theory and practice. It's just too intimidating.

 

[Antmany2k]

It drives me CRAZY to think that if we were sharper we could have found him 30 seconds or a minute earlier and his recovery could have been better

and if you found him 30 seconds or a minute later it could have been a lot worse.

you acted and saved his life. more than his DM was prepared to do. its natural to feel you could have done more or should have done more. that is human nature but all the training in the world doesn't prepare someone for a live situation. some freeze, some panic, some act. lucky for him you acted.

According to eye-witnesses the diver in question indicated his air supply (50bar) on time. he also indicated "low on air" on time. The DM who was watching them indicated in both cases to "stay put" and "wait". The diver, lacking experience, did what he was told because he trusted the dive team.

This is something i have become very aware of. as a beginner (id still say i'm a novice but here i mean my first 50 odd dives) i was fully reliant on DMs. id kit up, get in, follow them, tell them when i hit 100 bar, turn around, and come back up, job done.
as that goes on and you find some are better than others and ive had 2 situations (nothing major) where the DM wasn't on hand. 1 i was at the bottom of a wreck at 30m vis was not great and the DM was digging around in the sand for gunpowder sticks (it was a cargo ship sunk in the war) well all the sand and silt went up and i couldn't see a thing and the DM had gone off ahead (it was just the 2 of us as i was his only customer) and i panicked but quickly calmed myself, knew the wreck was on my left and had done it 3 times before so knew how to navigate it so i ascended slowly to the top of the bow and flashed my torch around till the DM found me
had another situation where a diver coughed into his reg as his mask filled with water and panicked and shot to the surface (luckily from only 10 or 12 meters and no damage was done but the DM had gone off ahead and not seen this go on. i signaled him back with my brand new rattle (bought for situations like that) and he went up to the surface and took the guy who panicked back to shore while leaving me (around 30 dives into my hobby) in charge of leading 5 other people (with between 2 and 20 OW dives) back to shore with a safety stop in. it was something i wasn't comfortable with and something i didn't expect and probably a situation i shouldn't have been put in but luckily everyone got back safe and it all happened relatively shallow.
i realized that day that i was far too reliant on DM's and dive teams and that part of being a good diver is being sufficient enough to look after myself and others should a situation arise. it's part of the reason i want to do rescue next instead of my deep certification

But I have huge guilt about that. Should I have know better than to clip it where I did? Should my husband have know better than to give a newbie a carabiner? We talk about this a lot. Our last dive trip (my second) didn't give us the opportunity to buddy - he got sick and we had only one dive together. But this next trip, we will be working with our DI on things like buddy breathing (I'm better on air than he is ) and other things we should be able to do as buddies. I am also doing my AOW on our next trip.

its a learning experience. and on only your 4th dive there are going to be teething issues. just unfortunate that you had a situation like that arise.
From personal experience it takes time to get your gear configuration the way you want it and in a way that is comfortable for you to deal with situations. i am on nearly 100 dives and i still tweak my gear. this is in no small part to me spending a lot of time with instabuddies. i have learned a hell of a lot more from other divers than i have with my regular buddy. i always look at the way everyone has their equipment set up, gadgets and gizmos that they have and the way they conduct themselves above and below the water and if i think it will benefit me or make me a better diver then i use it. for instance i now have an elastic necklace for my primary reg so that if i lose it or it gets knocked out i know exactly where it is without wildly reaching around trying to find it. i started doing that cause i saw a Belgian diver on the same boat as me doing it. not everything will work for you but it pays to see if there are things people do that you think will improve you as a diver. if you will be diving regularly it would be good for you to both be familiar with each others configuration and hose clips etc. and clips should be done before hand but on your 4th dive you weren't to know that so don't beat yourself up about it, use it as a lesson for future dives

 

[Neilwood]

This is exactly why I will not go dive with another DM until I feel confident to make these kinds of decisions on my own. As you can see by my number of dives, I am new to diving but I have people I trust around me. All my dives have been with the same DI who knows me, my skills and my history. I want to go dive other places but if I ever end up diving with a DM like the one in your story, I want to know enough to make decisions. I know it will be a while before I get there though.

So I have my own story - not anywhere near as scary as yours - and some on this board may laugh at my silly newbie experience. But it was my first real lesson in safety.

I was on my 4th dive for my OW. I was the only person in the group who wasn't at least AOW. That was my husband. Everybody else on the boat was rescue, DM or DI. My husband and I were the only ones on the boat with less than hundreds of dives - a very seasoned group who all had their eyes on us.

My husband/buddy was having problems with his regs during the dive - occasional wet breath. He wasn't phased by it. Towards the end of the dive, we were at about 20 feet just coming up for our safety stop when his regs started failing intermittently. He was only a few feet from me and I pointed to my octo. He reached for it and tried to pull it towards him but couldn't.

There is this thing some people/dive ops do where they bend the octo hose and put it in a D ring on a BC. I'm not fond of the practice but there was no keeper on my rental BC so that's the way I set up my gear. The group descended to the sandy patch, and as people started to swim away for our dive, my husband approached me and gave me a carabiner as a tank banger - at a point when nobody else in the group could possibly have noticed. I clipped it in the first spot I found. Turns out it was in the loop in the octo hose. This is why my husband couldn't grab it later when his regs were failing. He ended up doing a CESA and was fine.

But I have huge guilt about that. Should I have know better than to clip it where I did? Should my husband have know better than to give a newbie a carabiner? We talk about this a lot. Our last dive trip (my second) didn't give us the opportunity to buddy - he got sick and we had only one dive together. But this next trip, we will be working with our DI on things like buddy breathing (I'm better on air than he is ) and other things we should be able to do as buddies. I am also doing my AOW on our next trip.

I would appreciate any advice from you and the other seasoned divers on this board about things we should be working on together on our next trip.

What I have done since that dive (lessons learned)
- bought a dozen octo keepers to make sure I will have a supply just in case the one on my BC is missing
- realized that underwater is not the best place to add something to my gear
- bought my own BC so I will be super familiar with it
- bought my husband his own regs mostly because he will never trust rental regs again

The main thing is you learned from the problem. Think long and hard about changing/adding gear and how it may cause issues.

I was lucky with my instructor I guess - he wanted to train me to be a diver that could pair up with anyone. His standard was "Would I want you as my buddy if & when something goes wrong?". My first dives post OW were with a group where the experience varied from 60-100+ dives. No one commented on my diving apart from afterwards when I asked how I had done as a newbie - they went "newbie? Didn't look like it"

Personally I always have my octo stored in the way you suggest (looped through the right chest D ring on my BP&W - I don't trust reg holders to actually do their job and hold the reg in place - seen too many octos and regs flailing about) and never had any issues with deployment. Especially if I am diving with a new buddy, I will demonstrate deployment so they know "grab the reg, pull down and its yours".

 

[49north]

This is exactly why I will not go dive with another DM until I feel confident to make these kinds of decisions on my own. As you can see by my number of dives, I am new to diving but I have people I trust around me. All my dives have been with the same DI who knows me, my skills and my history. I want to go dive other places but if I ever end up diving with a DM like the one in your story, I want to know enough to make decisions. I know it will be a while before I get there though.

So I have my own story - not anywhere near as scary as yours - and some on this board may laugh at my silly newbie experience. But it was my first real lesson in safety.

I was on my 4th dive for my OW. I was the only person in the group who wasn't at least AOW. That was my husband. Everybody else on the boat was rescue, DM or DI. My husband and I were the only ones on the boat with less than hundreds of dives - a very seasoned group who all had their eyes on us.

My husband/buddy was having problems with his regs during the dive - occasional wet breath. He wasn't phased by it. Towards the end of the dive, we were at about 20 feet just coming up for our safety stop when his regs started failing intermittently. He was only a few feet from me and I pointed to my octo. He reached for it and tried to pull it towards him but couldn't.

There is this thing some people/dive ops do where they bend the octo hose and put it in a D ring on a BC. I'm not fond of the practice but there was no keeper on my rental BC so that's the way I set up my gear. The group descended to the sandy patch, and as people started to swim away for our dive, my husband approached me and gave me a carabiner as a tank banger - at a point when nobody else in the group could possibly have noticed. I clipped it in the first spot I found. Turns out it was in the loop in the octo hose. This is why my husband couldn't grab it later when his regs were failing. He ended up doing a CESA and was fine.

But I have huge guilt about that. Should I have know better than to clip it where I did? Should my husband have know better than to give a newbie a carabiner? We talk about this a lot. Our last dive trip (my second) didn't give us the opportunity to buddy - he got sick and we had only one dive together. But this next trip, we will be working with our DI on things like buddy breathing (I'm better on air than he is ) and other things we should be able to do as buddies. I am also doing my AOW on our next trip.

I would appreciate any advice from you and the other seasoned divers on this board about things we should be working on together on our next trip.

What I have done since that dive (lessons learned)
- bought a dozen octo keepers to make sure I will have a supply just in case the one on my BC is missing
- realized that underwater is not the best place to add something to my gear
- bought my own BC so I will be super familiar with it
- bought my husband his own regs mostly because he will never trust rental regs again

I am hardly a seasoned diver, but my wife and I never felt like we could take care of ourselves until we took Fundamentals. If you want to learn good buddy skills, I highly recommend it!

 

[The Chairman]

This is such an awesome thread, and I have decided to make it a sticky. Experienced or not, this is the Basic Forum which is a green, or protected zone. Feel free to post your scariest moments with the expectation that you won't be judged. Sure, there will be some suggestions on how to avoid those instances, but there should be no attempts to shame or cajole. We'll be glad to handle any of those should they decide to crop up: just report it.

My diving dates back to 1969, and a lot of it consisted of escaping the bad decisions I made out of my ignorance. I didn't certify until much, much later. Even after certification, I had a few moments escaping bad decisions I made out of hubris.

I am hardly a seasoned diver, but my wife and I never felt like we could take care of ourselves until we took Fundamentals. If you want to learn good buddy skills, I highly recommend it!

Such a sad statement that is all too true. It's a condemnation of how you first learned to dive. It's not your fault, but that of your instructor and you're definitely not alone. Look at the incidents in the OP and how a lack of buoyancy control played a role. Trim, buoyancy, and propulsion are essential for competent and fun diving and should be taught from the very beginning. Many of the stories you read here on SB can be traced back to a lack of these skills.

 

[Miyaru]

At the end of this summer I took two people down to 30m, my AOW student and his already AOW-certified girlfriend. It was his 3rd attempt to do a deep dive and his 9th AOW course dive.

We reached 30m after roughly 10 minutes. Since it's pitchblack at these depths, comparing colors is not an option so I handed him my wetnotes with some easy math on it. He was not slowed down by any narcosis, stayed perfectly horizontal in trim. I was pleased that he finally had everything under control now.

I turned the dive and lead him back towards shore using my compass. After about 2 minutes he signalled me that he was down to 65bar. Although that was more than enough to surface, I could also see distress in his eyes, so I placed my longhose in a loop around his head, offered the 2nd stage in front of his face and he changed regs. Usually when divers are supplied with alternate air, they relax again and stop worrying about the amount of air they have left. I was also surprised, since he started the math exercise with 110bar of air in his tank.

Then his girlfriend swims into him. For a moment he's wedged in between me and her, causing him to start hyperventilating. Seeing the enormous cloud of gas above his head, I realize this dive is about to go south. We're at 28m depth, about 5m away from the slope (and still just within the shipping lane above us).
I drag him in front of me, give him a thumb-up and ok sign but he just looks at me and doesn't respond with a handsignal. He also doesn't grab his deflator. Dumping the air from my wing, I use his deflator to bring us both back to the surface. He is unresponsive by now, but I can still see him breathing out. Keeping the speed indicater on my computer just out of the red, I bring him up with roughly 20m/min. Once on the surface, he doesn't lift his head out of the water, so I stabilize him, remove his mask, take the reg out and check his breathing. He's alive.

On the shore, he was immediately put on oxygen, bystanders already called the EMTs. The emergency services in the Netherlands are well organized. Within minutes the first ambulance arrived, and since 3 divers had made a rapid ascent a 2nd ambulance was dispatched. 20 minutes later a medical doctor arrived by helicopter. The unlucky diver regained consciousness half an hour after surfacing, and the for the next hour the paramedics stayed to monitor all three of us for any signs of DCS, the helicopter was ready to fly straight to a recompression facility.


It ended all very positive. The shitstorm started afterwards.

I slept bad for a couple of nights, dreams of different scenarios like suddenly not seeing his divelight anymore, searching for a lost student. Or him simply dying on me during ascent. I reported the incident to both DAN and the dive organization. That turned into several hours of paperwork, forcing you to re-live every second of the incident again. The amount of details they ask (in case of a lawsuit) was unexpected. Forms, signed liability releases, service dates from all used dive equipment, brands, models, hydro-dates on the tank, computer profiles up to 24 hours before the incident and many more things.

Then you get all the know-it-alls, people who were not present and heard some a-friend-from-a-friend stories, picking on that one minute where I could have made a different decision.
Later I heard stories that I was lost down there at the bottom, unable to find my way back, swimming around in circles. At least that was the perception of a diver who hates her compass and has unimpressive navigational skills. I also heard people blaming me for not having oxygen with me, although the surface cover went to take a 7 liter oxygen stage bottle from my car. There are many more rumours. What's important for me, is that the people who know all the tiny details, cleared me of any blame. Root cause of the incident was dehydration and extremely low blood-pressure of the student diver, which was treated with IV fluids at the scene.

The lessons I learned:

• On a dive where everything goes according to plan, the **** can hit the fan within seconds and there's nothing you can do to prevent that.
• I didn't want the girlfriend to join us, since she messed up earlier course dives. The prospect of both of them canceling the dive, made me allow her to join anyway. Will absolutely not happen again. Better to hurt feelings than to hurt lifes.
• No matter what happened, people will look at every opportunity to blame something on you. I understand now damn well why people keep their mouths shut in the incident & accident section.

 

[billt4sf]

Easy. One dive I felt I almost died twice. Oh...it's amazing that no one got hurt that day.

The lesson is: no one, not even a skilled instructor with 1000's of dives that is familiar with the area, can predict what the ocean will give you.

How I almost drowned -- twice

I have since been back to that same site -- it was as calm as a bathtub. Going there next week -- if we can get the H out of Bali!

- Bill

 

[lv2dive]

There is a reason every time I think about becoming an instructor I decide it's not a good idea for me!!!! Glad it worked for out for you in this case.

I've been in a few situations where I've had to deal with panicked divers (almost always passive panic). Each time the potential negative outcome (which was luckily prevented) definitely stayed with me.

At the end of this summer I took two people down to 30m, my AOW student and his already AOW-certified girlfriend. It was his 3rd attempt to do a deep dive and his 9th AOW course dive.

We reached 30m after roughly 10 minutes. Since it's pitchblack at these depths, comparing colors is not an option so I handed him my wetnotes with some easy math on it. He was not slowed down by any narcosis, stayed perfectly horizontal in trim. I was pleased that he finally had everything under control now.

I turned the dive and lead him back towards shore using my compass. After about 2 minutes he signalled me that he was down to 65bar. Although that was more than enough to surface, I could also see distress in his eyes, so I placed my longhouse in a loop around his head, offered the 2nd stage in front of his face and he changed regs. Usually when divers are supplied with alternate air, they relax again and stop worrying about the amount of air they have left. I was also surprised, since he started the math exercise with 110bar of air in his tank.

Then his girlfriend swims into him. For a moment he's wedged in between me and her, causing him to start hyperventilating. Seeing the enormous cloud of gas above his head, I realize this dive is about to go south. We're at 28m depth, about 5m away from the slope (and still just within the shipping lane above us).
I drag him in front of me, give him a thumb-up and ok sign but he just looks at me and doesn't respond with a handsignal. He also doesn't grab his deflator. Dumping the air from my wing, I use his deflator to bring us both back to the surface. He is unresponsive by now, but I can still see him breathing out. Keeping the speed indicater on my computer just out of the red, I bring him up with roughly 20m/min. Once on the surface, he doesn't lift his head out of the water, so I stabilize him, remove his mask, take the reg out and check his breathing. He's alive.

On the shore, he was immediately put on oxygen, bystanders already called the EMTs. The emergency services in the Netherlands are well organized. Within minutes the first ambulance arrived, and since 3 divers had made a rapid ascent a 2nd ambulance was dispatched. 20 minutes later a medical doctor arrived by helicopter. The unlucky diver regained consciousness half an hour after surfacing, and the for the next hour the paramedics stayed to monitor all three of us for any signs of DCS, the helicopter was ready to fly straight to a recompression facility.


It ended all very positive. The shitstorm started afterwards.

I slept bad for a couple of nights, dreams of different scenarios like suddenly not seeing his divelight anymore, searching for a lost student. Or him simply dying on me during ascent. I reported the incident to both DAN and the dive organization. That turned into several hours of paperwork, forcing you to re-live every second of the incident again. The amount of details they ask (in case of a lawsuit) was unexpected. Forms, signed liability releases, service dates from all used dive equipment, brands, models, hydro-dates on the tank, computer profiles up to 24 hours before the incident and many more things.

Then you get all the know-it-alls, people who were not present and heard some a-friend-from-a-friend stories, picking on that one minute where I could have made a different decision.
Later I heard stories that I was lost down there at the bottom, unable to find my way back, swimming around in circles. At least that was the perception of a diver who hates her compass and has unimpressive navigational skills. I also heard people blaming me for not having oxygen with me, although the surface cover went to take a 7 liter oxygen stage bottle from my car. There are many more rumours. What's important for me, is that the people who know all the tiny details, cleared me of any blame. Root cause of the incident was dehydration and extremely low blood-pressure of the student diver, which was treated with IV fluids at the scene.

The lessons I learned:

• On a dive where everything goes according to plan, the **** can hit the fan within seconds and there's nothing you can do to prevent that.
• I didn't want the girlfriend to join us, since she messed up earlier course dives. The prospect of both of them canceling the dive, made me allow her to join anyway. Will absolutely not happen again. Better to hurt feelings than to hurt lifes.
• No matter what happened, people will look at every opportunity to blame something on you. I understand now damn well why people keep their mouths shut in the incident & accident section.

 

[Sol518]

A few notes directed at the people who have been involved in rescues. I know that it is human nature to beat yourself up about what you could have done better, but give yourselves some credit. The fact that you acted instead of panicking and freezing up gave the victims a much higher chance of survival. It's easy to look back and and say "I should have..." or "Why didn't I ...?" but when the emergency is happening you don't have the luxury of time to think about every possibility. You have to assess the situation and react.

For people worried about how they would react in an emergency situation, think about your priorities:
1. Don't become a victim.

Even if there are enough divers at the scene with the skills and training needed to conduct 2 simultaneous rescues, multiple critical patients at the same time could easily overwhelm many rural EMS systems. Sometimes the best thing you can do to improve the chances of the victims survival is not doing anything instead of doing something that you are not comfortable with or that would put you at risk. If you end up needing help you will be taking rescue resources away from the original victim and potentially decreasing their chance of a positive outcome.
​

2. Get the victim to the appropriate medical care.

Don't let it get to you if you are unable to fix the problem on your own. You are just one link in the chain of survival. Anticipate your needs so the next link is there as soon as possible. Confirm that someone has contacted EMS. Make sure you are doing what you can to stabilize the patient, but remember that you might not have the training or equipment to do everything that needs to be done. As a paramedic some of the most stressful situations that I've been in have been when I know what needs to be done, but I don't have the equipment to provide the treatment needed.
​

3. Documentation - follow up.

As @Miyaru mentioned there could be an in depth investigation into what happened. There will be questions about details that you don't remember or think are insignificant. Answer everything honestly and factually. Don't speculate or offer opinions. Coming from the EMS world I am used to writing up run reports after every call and I do the same if I'm involved in a rescue when I'm not working, it helps me get my thoughts in order. Again keep it simple, what did you see, what did you do. Leave opinions out of it. If you don't remember, don't guess. It's OK to say that you don't remember or didn't notice.
https://www.scubaboard.com/community/members/miyaru.482801/​

4. Again, take care of yourself.

PTSD is a condition that can affect anyone, not just people in combat or terror attacks. Sometimes it can be the result of a single incident, or it could build up over time and multiple situations. If you are feeling "off", talk to someone. It could be a buddy, friend, mentor, significant other, or a professional. Watch out for the other people involved, if someone isn't acting normal, talk to them, see how they are doing. Nobody is immune and we all have different triggers. Maybe the victim looked like a family member, or maybe the situation was similar to something that happened to you and it puts you into a "that could have happened to me" mindset.https://www.scubaboard.com/community/members/miyaru.482801/

Often in EMS we will do an incident review after a serious call. This is a great tool, but it is important to keep blame out of it. It's ok to use it as a learning opportunity, but remember that you reacted in the best way you could to the situation that was presented to you. I find that often in these debriefs it is a good opportunity for less experienced people to get some insight into why the more experienced people made the decisions they did, which will help them if they are ever in a situation where they are the most experienced person.
​

5. Remember that you did not put the victim into the situation.

If the victim wasn't in your group this is an easy one. To prevent this from happening within your group make sure that you are not pressuring people into situation they aren't comfortable with. Make sure everyone in your group understands the risks, and let them make their own decisions. Encourage a culture in which everyone knows that they can call the dive for any reason, at any time, without any judgement. Even if it's just "I'm feeling a little off today". If it's just two of you the proper response to that is "OK, lets go get lunch instead."
​

I feel like I've rambled on long enough. I hope this is useful to folks who worry about ending up in the middle of an emergency. Remember your first priority is yourself, then your buddy, then everyone else. Do what you can, don't feel obligated to do something that you are not comfortable with, or that would put you at risk. Everyone has their own level of acceptable risk, don't feel you need to do something just because someone else is comfortable with it.

 

[Kimela]

@Angel Fish, thank you especially for points #4 and 5!

Do dive shops offer any sort of support for employees who have been present in a situation when it goes badly? Considering that many of the instructors I have seen working in our local LDS have regular full-time jobs and are part-time instructors, I'm guessing they don't have EAP's associated with the LDS. Now I'm just curious.

 

[Diver0001]

@Angel Fish, thank you especially for points #4 and 5!

Do dive shops offer any sort of support for employees who have been present in a situation when it goes badly? Considering that many of the instructors I have seen working in our local LDS have regular full-time jobs and are part-time instructors, I'm guessing they don't have EAP's associated with the LDS. Now I'm just curious.

I don't know of any. At the time I worked at the shop where I working during the second and the third incidents I wrote about in the OP several incidents took place that were pretty bad.

One incident involved a diver who died from a heart attack. He lied about a medical condition that he knew he had. During prep for the dive he was adjusting his weight belt just prior to the entry and keeled over on the jetty and rolled into the water. At that point it became a "diving" accident and the role and actions of the instructor who was present were put under the microscope. It was reminiscent of what Miyaru experienced.

The diver wasn't saved. His wife subsequently told police that he knew about his condition and they had mutually agreed that he should live his life to the fullest and die living instead of die waiting to die. The effect on the instructor was severely traumatic. Over a short time he stopped teaching, quit his job, moved and we never heard from him again. It was like he needed to "reset his life" and start fresh. Talking about it seemed to be a bit of a taboo. I don't remember any attempts made by anyone in the staff to help the instructor involved or to debrief this with the staff. It was like the fact that it happened was just ignored. Part of that may have had to do with how it played out on social media. Like in the case Miyaru mentioned, the forums were full of all kinds of wild theory spinning about what had happened by people who had no knowledge at all of the background of the incident and the instructor was called every ridiculous thing you can imagine online. One of the reasons moderators on this forum tend to be very strict in the A&I section has to do with learning from these kinds of things. On other forums, such as the Dutch forums, moderation is done to a very different bar and blamestorming is common. This did NOT help him.

As for the shop: after that incident my impression was that the shop was mostly worried about not being held responsible. It caused them to re-structure their insurance and how they contracted staff such that if another such incident should happen that they could claim that the instructor was fully accountable for they way they ran their course and that the shop was not involved in managing that part of the operation at all. The shop and the "dive school" were split into two legal entities and it positioned itself as a service provider that provided class room facilities, the PADI administration support, gear and air etc. and then paid instructors on a commission basis. All of the instructors were free lancers and all of us had day jobs outside the industry. The "dive school" was created mainly as a means (the way I see it) of asserting some kind of procedural and quality control for insurance purposes. For example, every course was checked to ensure that instructors adhered strictly to the standards. We were all required to keep a check list of everything we did, including having the students sign off on it. In business terms, however, the "dive school" was an expendable entity. All of the assets were held in the shop and the school could be allowed to go bankrupt or to be shut down by authorities without having to close the shop or even have much impact on the business. It was clever from a business point of view but left the instructor completely exposed to all of the risk.

Nevertheless my personal experience is that just like any other business, a dive shop will protect itself from risk FIRST and throw their staff under the bus if an incident takes place. In this particular case it wasn't the fault of the shop or the instructor but the owner of the business responded to the risk issue anyway. That's how shops work.

In the incident (the accident) I mentioned in the first post the police did, in fact, ask me if I wanted to engage "slachtofferhulp" (translates to "victims support") for myself or my team. This is government sponsored psychological help for any potentially traumatic event. It's covered on your basic medical insurance. The question was posed, however, ON THE SCENE, only minutes after the victim had been taken away in the ambulance and naturally none of us felt at that moment as though it was necessary. This was the only time it was offered and I don't think any of us thought to revisit the offer once the impact of it had started to take hold. As we discussed in our PM's I wasn't aware of of my feelings being potentially PTSD related until I started this thread and you mentioned the possibility. So even though the shop didn't do anything, the opportunity to get professional help, at least in the Netherlands, is there if you choose for it.

What shops COULD do here is to be more assertive in getting people in for at least an initial evaluation, or have someone from "slachtoffer" help come and do a debriefing and make people more aware of their options for getting help. It costs the shop nothing (as I said, it's covered by your medical insurance) and given how many people I've seen in this industry who are walking around with regrets and PTSD type issues like throwing the towel in the ring after bad incidents, it seems like the least the shop could do.

R..