Equipment Rebreather incident with narration

[Cthippo]

Not my video, but one I found very informative.

 

[Edward3c]

Sounded like Don Robertson, BSAC’s former Head of Diving & Training.

 

[davehicks]

I watched this yesterday. The guy botched assembly and testing of his unit in an obvious way. He "thinks" he did a pos/neg test, but clearly did not. He then went on a 200 foot dive and flooded his ccr.

When he realized there was a problem he was focused on other divers diagnosing his issue rather than starting to surface. Like he would be able to fix a leak underwater and continue with a flooded unit?

It was interesting to watch but also kind of amazing to see the tunnel vision he developed around trying to understand rather than react. End the dive, fix the problem out of my the water.

 

[Ez E]

I watched this yesterday. The guy botched assembly and testing of his unit in an obvious way. He "thinks" he did a pos/neg test, but clearly did not. He then went on a 200 foot dive and flooded his ccr.

When he realized there was a problem he was focused on other divers diagnosing his issue rather than starting to surface. Like he would be able to fix a leak underwater and continue with a flooded unit?

It was interesting to watch but also kind of amazing to see the tunnel vision he developed around trying to understand rather than react. End the dive, fix the problem out of my the water.

Mistakes for sure. Though Im not a CCR diver. Im glad hes alive and didnt suffer any debilitating injuries or death. I guarantee he wont become complacent again. And thank god for buddies close by.

 

[lermontov]

I watched this yesterday. The guy botched assembly and testing of his unit in an obvious way. He "thinks" he did a pos/neg test, but clearly did not. He then went on a 200 foot dive and flooded his ccr.

When he realized there was a problem he was focused on other divers diagnosing his issue rather than starting to surface. Like he would be able to fix a leak underwater and continue with a flooded unit?

It was interesting to watch but also kind of amazing to see the tunnel vision he developed around trying to understand rather than react. End the dive, fix the problem out of my the water.

i though he processed the situation petty calmly, at no time was he out of control or panicky - trying to work out how serious his issue was -

asking dive buddies to check was part of the assessment and trying to understand was his process in HOW to react - it could have been something simple that could have been fixed - his last option was to BO - ive been on that situation myself - giving myself a cut off time to resolve the issue or BO-

it was 13 min from when he thought something was wrong to when he started up the shot line I think thats stretching it esp with significant deco ahead

Im sure hell go away and assess and be more thorough with his predive checks

 

[davehicks]

Yes, he was calm and in control all of the time which is great. But his obsession with diagnosis rather than responding delayed what should have been immediately recognized as a dive ending event. Given that he was at 60 meters all that time adding up deco and gas required for bailout I feel that he was adding to the problem instead of resolving it.

There was never going to be anything he could do to fix the problem, so this should have been done on the surface or maybe during the shallow deco period.

 

[sunnyboy]

Yes, he was calm and in control all of the time which is great. But his obsession with diagnosis rather than responding delayed what should have been immediately recognized as a dive ending event. Given that he was at 60 meters all that time adding up deco and gas required for bailout I feel that he was adding to the problem instead of resolving it.

There was never going to be anything he could do to fix the problem, so this should have been done on the surface or maybe during the shallow deco period.

You don't know that (fixing the problem). Yes, obvious AFTER the dive but not obvious during, hence the diagnosis time.

Many rebreather problems can be diagnosed and mediated underwater, especially if you have the number of dives this person had and excellent knowledge of your unit. The delay was not at all unreasonable for a REBREATHER dive, especially in this case with such a large team, knowing you have sufficient bailout gas, and knowing there's a surface team with even more gas (3 tanks - deep mix, 50/50 and O2!!!) all handy.

 

[Valerii Vakshul]

I looked. The Inspira case (top cover) is evil.

 

[davehicks]

You don't know that (fixing the problem). Yes, obvious AFTER the dive but not obvious during, hence the diagnosis time.

Many rebreather problems can be diagnosed and mediated underwater, especially if you have the number of dives this person had and excellent knowledge of your unit. The delay was not at all unreasonable for a REBREATHER dive, especially in this case with such a large team, knowing you have sufficient bailout gas, and knowing there's a surface team with even more gas (3 tanks - deep mix, 50/50 and O2!!!) all handy.

I have done more rebreather dives than this guy and when you have a failure like this your first move is to safely end the dive. I've seen CCR divers act like this guy did and it made me and everyone else very uncomfortable. Monkey around with the unit after the dive, not at 200 feet.

 

[johndiver999]

I was surprised that he would need to ask the captain to send down deco gas. Would not his buddy and other divers be able to supply him?