Panic and Tech Diving

[Rhone Man]

I think they do teach it to a degree, don't they? The whole: stop, breathe, think...

I am not sure you can psychologically condition people not to panic, but you can train them to avoid situations where they are likely to be overwhelmed, and to try and manage situations best when things do start to break down. Beyond that... if they could do it, presumably it would be part of military/emergency personnel training?

 

[Dive-aholic]

Yes, the end might have been different, but I'm more interested in the start.

In one, when the incident starts the account was that they made contact with their buddy and called the dive. They may have been stressed, but they weren't panicked.

In the other, the diver apparently just bolted, with no regard to their buddy.

Breaking the rules is part of the accident chain, but it starts with the panic situation.

What sort of tips do you give to your students to avoid it?

My point is the start might have been different if Pat hadn't broken any rules. I stress to my students to stop and breathe every time something seems "not right". A few seconds, or even a couple of minutes, of taking sanity breaths can make a huge difference. I also design my courses so most of the drills are unannounced. Sure, they're expecting something, but they don't know what's coming. I think that works much better than announcing and planning every single drill during the dive brief.

 

[TSandM]

Rob, that's a very good point.

In my Intro class, the only thing I did that wasn't briefed ahead of time and completely set up was having my instructor swim up and hold out a note to me that said, "Bubbles from behind you -- isolate." In my Cave 1 class, except for lost line and lost buddy, nothing was pre-scripted. And some of the things Danny threw at us were fairly complex -- taking an OOA diver out on my long hose and having my buddy go missing. What's the right answer there? (Add that we could see daylight at that point.)

One of the reasons I really liked my C1 better than Intro, and was very glad I went to the time and expense to take a class which was really equivalent in access to the one I had already done, was the amount of "stuff" Danny gave us to cope with -- not to mention his absolute and unwavering attention to rules and proper procedure. In fact, after this death, I wrote to him to thank him for having taught me as well as he did. If I were consider doing a visual jump, I suspect I'd hear Danny's voice in the back of my head, telling me what a bad idea that was.

 

[ucfdiver]

What's the right answer there? (Add that we could see daylight at that point.)

I would drop a cookie to mark the exact spot I lost my buddy, and then escort the OOA buddy to the surface (solve that problem for good first). Then recalculate 1/3rds to look for the other buddy.

 

[Dive-aholic]

In my Cave 1 class, except for lost line and lost buddy, nothing was pre-scripted. And some of the things Danny threw at us were fairly complex -- taking an OOA diver out on my long hose and having my buddy go missing. What's the right answer there? (Add that we could see daylight at that point.

Interesting that Danny pre-scripts lost buddy. That's an easy exercise to do unannounced. In fact, I've never pre-scripted that one and never had it pre-scripted for me during my training.

As for an OOA with a missing buddy within the cavern, I'll 2nd James' response.

 

[TSandM]

Well, that's what I did . . . and I got my butt chewed. And despite that, I'm still not sure Danny was right (although virtually every time I disagreed with him, subsequent events proved he was right). But the biggest lesson I learned from the experience was that you can run into situations where there is no "book" answer, and you have to make decisions and live with the consequences.

 

[Dive-aholic]

So what would have been the correct response according to Danny?

 

[TSandM]

Go back, at the moment I realized Kirk was gone, and find him. Points being that, at that moment, I knew where I had last seen him and it wasn't far; seven minutes later, after I had escorted the OOG diver to the surface and returned, he could be anywhere. Also, we were at the end of the dive with our lowest gas reserves, and if he was highly stressed, he could blow through a lot of gas in that length of time. I still don't know if that was right; the idea of doing a buddy search with an OOG diver on my long hose still doesn't sit well with me. But Danny is a very wise man.

Back to the original topic -- I was thinking about some of the training scenarios I've done. For example, on the first dive I did with one of my instructors, after pulling a runaway wing inflator on us on descent, when we went down the second time, I shot a bag and tied it off as an upline. My buddy was running line and began to swim off, at which point I realized I was entangled in the upline. I signaled, but he didn't catch it, and he therefore got a fair bit away (25 or 30 feet, maybe) before he realized I wasn't with him. He turned and was immediately put out of gas. He swam to me and I donated (this was no biggie) and then I put my backup in my mouth and inhaled . . . and there was nothing there. So, I'm tied up in the line, my buddy has my primary reg, and I can't breathe. Of course, it immediately occurred to me that I had a left post rolloff, so I reached up and turned on the post. But I had never had anyone turn off my gas without telling me about it before, so this came as out of the blue as it would have in a real situation.

I deal with it calmly. BUT -- was that because of training, or temperament? Does this type of scenario-based education actually extinguish the tendency to panic, or does it simply select for people who are unlikely to get flustered in the first place?

 

[packman]

I had some of my my most major charley-foxtrot drills/moments during an Intro to Tech class I took. The guy leading the class would throw random things at us through out the class...usually OOA drills when we were in the middle of dealing with something else. He was also good at giving us OOA drills when we were at the farthest point from each other.

His point in all this was to instill in us situational awareness as well as learn to recognize when a situation starts to spiral out of control. That most deaths aren't caused by a single large event but rather by a small event that leads to something else until things quickly spin out of control and panic sets in. When panic sets in, you're dead. We were taught to stop, breathe, think, then act...that as long as you can breathe and your buoyancy was under control, you can slowly and calmly work your way of of a situation.

This was the first (and only) scuba class I have ever failed...although I did eventually pass it. I credit this class with making my cave classes a breeze.

 

[packman]

Does this type of scenario-based education actually extinguish the tendency to panic, or does it simply select for people who are unlikely to get flustered in the first place?

This is a very good question. I think maybe a little of both. For those that are not prone to panic, it helps them realize they can work their way out of tough situations and maybe allows them to keep the panic monster at bay. For those that are prone to panic, it allows this to show up in a controlled class situation and hopefully allows them to recognize early (and before a true emergency arises) that this type of diving may not be for them.