KevinNM
Contributor
I suspect it's like SWAT teams. There are standards and there are those to rigorously follow them. Then there is Lubbock, Pima County, Los Angeles County, ....
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article:Jenkins explained the third diver’s mask began taking on water and he was unable to clear it. The pressure on his mask increased the further he dove, Jenkins said. That prompted the third diver to ascend quickly.
article:...Long and the second diver began an ascent, stopping at around 20 to 30 feet below the surface for a “rest stop” to avoid decompression sickness, commonly called the bends. At that point, Poteat said, Long gave an indication that he was out of air... Long descended to the bottom, back to a depth of about 82 feet, Poteat said.
Bob, in this case North Carolina has a state OSH agency that will investigate. I would suspect we will see a Niosh report in that it was a PSD-FF on duty death. But you are right it will take a while. NC OSH covers public sector employees which puts them ahead of the FED. which does not. I know they have been working on PSD regulations but it has stalled this may cause them to push thru the regulations. But at least a real investigation report will be generated we can learn from.
It sounds like he had a mask squeeze. I've seen some new divers that had a mask squeeze and didn't deal with it (exhale through the nose into the mask) and the mask got tighter and tighter as they descended, and then imploded, filling with water. They have burst blood vessels in the whites of their eyes after the dive.
Sometimes newer divers dump their BCD before they ascend and start kicking to initiate an ascent instead of just inhaling deeply and releasing only enough air periodically to remain neutral during the whole ascent. It sounds like he may have dumped all of his air and was maintaining his shallower depth by finning and working hard, and when he stopped kicking, he sunk. It also appears that for him to sink with an empty tank, he was quite overweighted.
I have no idea how much training or recent experience the victim(s) had, but the types of issues as reported above appear to indicate less experience and/or training.
There are several different ways you can get your public safety divers. One is to recruit people who already work for the agency and train them as divers. It's like how you get guys on the bomb squad, unless you happen to have an actual ex-military EOD guy on your department you have to recruit them from your agency and then train them from scratch.+1
but why were such unskilled divers the search and rescue team?
but why were such unskilled divers the search and rescue team?
Can you describe the process you would use if you ran out of air and had to switch to a pony while wearing one of those masks?As for the mask issue, I have a Guardian and have used an AGA (Interspiro). They are nearly impossible to flood and you don't experience mask squeeze with them. I guess these guys were diving with standard masks and regs.
Paywall.I know nothing of PSD but found this article very interesting and possibly relevant, especially the section by Andrea Zaferes on training, mask loss and ponies...
http://www.fireengineering.com/arti...irefighting-the-parallels-of-self-rescue.html
ERDI Home | SDI | TDI | ERDIIt appears that multiple simple mistakes were made (add poor buoyancy control to the list of things mentioned above).
Since we seem to be jumping on the training / experience bandwagon I would like to learn more about the training / experience requirements for PSD (Public Safety Diving). I have not yet done a search for relevant threads, so if there are some handy ones please link them in.
Is there an organization that sets standards? Are there mandatory standards? For training? For re-training? For drills? For experience level? For type of equipment? Are there well defined standard procedures to be followed?