I think what you're getting at is the elephant in the room, so to speak. The driving force behind this behavior is financial. You could make a case for the state of or lack of tort reform, but at the end of the day, the financial impact from a lawsuit to the person(s) involved, dive shop, training agency, etc drives behavior and not what's "good" for the community or "right" however you want to define those terms.
Training Scuba Ranch TX Diving Accident
- Thread starter divezonescuba
- Start date
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My heart breaks for the family, friends, first responders.
Beyond that.. honestly, I'm tired. 3 decades in the industry, in the instruction side doing all I could to try and bring some sanity to the degradation of training and direction of dive training, I may as well tried to scream at the clouds
Being on the RSTC board and what most agencies really thought about safety broke me, it truly did. It's about a money train, not safety. The long, too long train of incidents like this are just the cost that is accepted to sell cards and materials, looked at with the same cold eyes of the Ford pinto accountants.
Accidents will happen no matter what, but with every equipment improvement of the last 4-5 decades we should have seen much better safety rates, we have not because in the same time training has degraded.
To everyone saying take Gareth's human factors class (a friend and a great class) the problem Gareth has is that the HF framework is not designed to work with an industry controlled at the highest levels of training by too many sociopaths that sell cards and materials, certify instructors fast, make instructors pay for the coverage the agencies hide behind. Anyhow..I could go on, but to what end.
I would both be curious, and I suspect furious of how much pool time that child had received.
I was not going to post. But as everyone has morbid curiosity and zero patience. Nobody is trying to hide anything. It will all be open to discuss and learn from. There is no diveshop owner that will not be working with their staff to work to avoid this repeating.
There were alot of shops staff that responded selflessly and heroicly working amazingly well together.
If you have never been a part of a fatality and given your heart over to a family than I will give you grace that you dont comprehend the utter devastation.
The family still has not had a funeral.
30 minutes after departing the hospital I started recieving thoughts and prayer along with requests for information. Every post the reponders would see set off a ripple of more questions we are unable to answer. Listening to some of the people chime in with wrong info makes me want to vomit. I can't and won't try to speak for the family. I will speak from a responders perspective only to say everyone is struggling to make this make sense. That is called trama. We will work through it. The investigation will go forward and a report will be made and it will be accurate. The rumour and even innocent speculation will not help and clouds the truth. Please keep the family in your prayers. Please keep the people that just happened to be at the ranch and responded in your prayers as they place what transpired in perspective. I know the vast majority of dive shop owners and instructors in this area. They all care deeply about the dive community and at a time like this we gather our staff and work to make sense. I am sure the posters here are trying to do the same. Please keep in mind how your expertise on the subject might be interpretted from people that gave all they had to help. We all care lets show compassion until all answers are revealed.
I appologise in advance as this will be all I will speak on this not to hide anything but to respect the process of proper investigation.
There were alot of shops staff that responded selflessly and heroicly working amazingly well together.
If you have never been a part of a fatality and given your heart over to a family than I will give you grace that you dont comprehend the utter devastation.
The family still has not had a funeral.
30 minutes after departing the hospital I started recieving thoughts and prayer along with requests for information. Every post the reponders would see set off a ripple of more questions we are unable to answer. Listening to some of the people chime in with wrong info makes me want to vomit. I can't and won't try to speak for the family. I will speak from a responders perspective only to say everyone is struggling to make this make sense. That is called trama. We will work through it. The investigation will go forward and a report will be made and it will be accurate. The rumour and even innocent speculation will not help and clouds the truth. Please keep the family in your prayers. Please keep the people that just happened to be at the ranch and responded in your prayers as they place what transpired in perspective. I know the vast majority of dive shop owners and instructors in this area. They all care deeply about the dive community and at a time like this we gather our staff and work to make sense. I am sure the posters here are trying to do the same. Please keep in mind how your expertise on the subject might be interpretted from people that gave all they had to help. We all care lets show compassion until all answers are revealed.
I appologise in advance as this will be all I will speak on this not to hide anything but to respect the process of proper investigation.
I thought after Linnea that this is the worst it could possibly get and nothing will hit me as hard as that. I guess maybe it's because it's a site I've been to so many times or that my son was 12 when I did his OW and my 11 yr old is prepping for his. It's just getting harder and harder to view this industry as a whole with anything but disgust. Some of my favorite people in the world and experiences come from this industry but it's becoming so much harder for the good apples to outweigh the kids dying.
Regarding pool training, one of the main reasons I stopped teaching shop OW classes was because the model was for instructors to sign up for weekends (not classes). So you could have one set of instructor/AI/DMs in the pool sessions and completely different on OW weekend. Don't know how common that is, but I could not stand spending days with someone with a fear of (fill in the blank), developing their trust in me, their confidence in themselves, making steady progress to help them stop listening to that voice of fear in their head and start trusting themselves, only to turn them over to a drill instructor who's going to give them marching orders, berate them for failing, and generally ensure they never want to get in the water again.
*disclaimer for those who jump in on page 10 of a thread to take comments out of context - no one is claiming to know what happened, why, or assign fault whether implied or direct.
mcohen1021
Contributor
The accident is so sad and tragic, I can't/don't want to imagine what the family is going through.
Its incidents like this that make me so thankful I took my 4 courses in college over long semesters. And I always will credit that and lots of crappy lake diving for making me a better diver than so many who go through the too fast cattle car dive shop courses.
Its incidents like this that make me so thankful I took my 4 courses in college over long semesters. And I always will credit that and lots of crappy lake diving for making me a better diver than so many who go through the too fast cattle car dive shop courses.
HiddenDiver
Registered
I highly doubt that anyone is insensitive to the situation or is ignoring the family's trauma. We all feel for everyone that had to endure the situation. As a father, it hits me hard as well, especially having been there when this all went down. I'm certain that the father and daughter woke up early that day excited to go diving, only to end up in this tragedy.
I am fully aware that there are missing pieces to this puzzle. But at the same time, we have enough puzzle pieces to get a pretty clear picture of the incident and how we, as an industry, should proceed.
Training and learning is best had when events are recent, it is relatable, and it is of close proximity. It is hard for Texas recreational divers to take away learnings from a CCR incident that happened 10 years ago in Sweden. It just doesn't have the same impact. I understand that we don't have the full picture here, but we do have enough to make proper adjustments for new divers going into the water at Scuba Ranch. And we must do the hardest part: Talk about it. Staying in the shadows and just "waiting until official report" will drive more speculation and falsehoods to spread.
To be clear, I'm not trying to be insensitive to the tragedy. I want dive professionals to learn from the event and know when to call a dive based on poor environmental conditions.
texfox98
Registered
I am new to the dive community as stated earlier in the thread, but I can share my perspective as a former first responder who has had to deal with deceased children as well as adults, and grief stricken families, and daily engaged in an occupation where one of the foremost tenets of every day was “don’t get killed.”
I think compassion and space for the family is vital. I don’t think anyone should be calling them, or going to their house, or speculating about their family history tavloid style, or publishing their names or identifying information.
I think there is great value in information, for safety purposes, about what happened. I’m assuming that’s why this section of scuba board even exists, because we are all responsible for our own safety out there. As a first responder, we spent a disproportionate amount of training breaking down real life situations where people were killed, and what factors led to those deaths, and what could have been done differently. I don’t know if the general public’s brains work that way, but mine does for sure. And as the mother of a young g daughter, I have taught her that complete security is an illusion, but we have a duty to ourselves and others to understand risks and how we mitigate them.
Understanding what happened to this child could potentially help other children. I’m assuming there will be an autopsy. The most likely cause of death is drowning, but kids can die suddenly from other events as well - neurological or cardiac - and even if the direct cause is drowning, an unknown or unexpected medical event could have triggered the sequence of events that led to drowning.
The possibility of litigation is likely going to keep the those immediately involved from ever publicly sharing information unless the investigation clearly shows that nothing they did would have changed the outcome, and logically that’s unlikely. I’m not saying anyone did anything wrong - and I agree it’s important not to speculate on that - but I’m saying it would be difficult to prove definitively that they are 100% without fault from a civil perspective, and as a result, for their own protection, I would not expect them
to publicly break down any of the background or specifics of what happened that day.
There might be significant details available from the police report once the investigation is closed. I actually have never been on that side of it, so not sure the extent of what they would be required to release by law.
There might be others close to the situation that could provide information that might help the dive community make sense of what happened. I, for one, appreciate and am interested in what they have to say for my own education and my daughter’s, as long as they keep it fact based and are not attacking anyone, which is all or mostly what I’ve seen in this thread from those who have first hand knowledge.
And for those who were there and are experiencing trauma because of it, I think you treat them like the family. If they want to speak about it, I’d be interested to hear, but if they don’t, they should be left alone to process.
I think compassion and space for the family is vital. I don’t think anyone should be calling them, or going to their house, or speculating about their family history tavloid style, or publishing their names or identifying information.
I think there is great value in information, for safety purposes, about what happened. I’m assuming that’s why this section of scuba board even exists, because we are all responsible for our own safety out there. As a first responder, we spent a disproportionate amount of training breaking down real life situations where people were killed, and what factors led to those deaths, and what could have been done differently. I don’t know if the general public’s brains work that way, but mine does for sure. And as the mother of a young g daughter, I have taught her that complete security is an illusion, but we have a duty to ourselves and others to understand risks and how we mitigate them.
Understanding what happened to this child could potentially help other children. I’m assuming there will be an autopsy. The most likely cause of death is drowning, but kids can die suddenly from other events as well - neurological or cardiac - and even if the direct cause is drowning, an unknown or unexpected medical event could have triggered the sequence of events that led to drowning.
The possibility of litigation is likely going to keep the those immediately involved from ever publicly sharing information unless the investigation clearly shows that nothing they did would have changed the outcome, and logically that’s unlikely. I’m not saying anyone did anything wrong - and I agree it’s important not to speculate on that - but I’m saying it would be difficult to prove definitively that they are 100% without fault from a civil perspective, and as a result, for their own protection, I would not expect them
to publicly break down any of the background or specifics of what happened that day.
There might be significant details available from the police report once the investigation is closed. I actually have never been on that side of it, so not sure the extent of what they would be required to release by law.
There might be others close to the situation that could provide information that might help the dive community make sense of what happened. I, for one, appreciate and am interested in what they have to say for my own education and my daughter’s, as long as they keep it fact based and are not attacking anyone, which is all or mostly what I’ve seen in this thread from those who have first hand knowledge.
And for those who were there and are experiencing trauma because of it, I think you treat them like the family. If they want to speak about it, I’d be interested to hear, but if they don’t, they should be left alone to process.
The student was with scuba toys who are notorious for poor dive masters and instructors, they routinely lose students and not not ensure the safety of their students. They did not even come get help from others to look for the student as quickly as they should have. They did not make sure they had proper supervision especially with a young g diver like that. I fully hold the instructors and scuba toys responsible for this and it was preventable. Yes the vis can be challenging but as an instructor and dm you make sure you stay with the group and don’t lose people or you have extra help if needed due to vis. Many shops out there use an instructor and a DM/dm candidate to help ensure student safety. Dry very sad and feel horrible for her motherThe North Texas diving community was shaken today following reports of an underwater diving accident at The Scuba Ranch in Terrell, Texas. First responders, instructors, divers, and staff were quickly on site, working together with professionalism and care during a very difficult situation.
PEACEFULDEPARTURES.CFD
Scuba Ranch Terrell Texas Death, Underwater diving Accident News – peacefuldepartures.cfd
Reportedly a 12/13 year old girl enrolled in an open water course.
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