Student Pulled from Elliott Bay in Seattle

[fmerkel]

I dove with a 15 year old girl that was freshly certified. She was not afraid of the water but she hardly had any functional skills at all. It took 4 dives, the first one which probably doubled her OW1 time, before she was at the level she could have passed a course with an instructor that gave a damn.

I'm not sure that the school is totally irrelevant. It could be. On the other hand you can end up with a 'culture' of processes and expectations that are fostered within that community. This is very evident in a lot of environments, not just diving instruction. I used to work in the local hospitals. Every one of them had a different culture although they were all in the same city, took patients not terribly dissimilar from one another, and often were staffed by individuals (physicians especially) that move between them. You had to go with the flow or your didn't fit there. Social pressure is not insignificant, even when lives are at stake.

 

[boulderjohn]

Why? it is relevant to the issue at hand. Don't over moderate. You do a disservice to the dialogue.

This thread is about a specific incident involving a specific diver. That is the topic of the thread.

In past years, threads in the A&I forum were often derailed from their specific topics by discussions such as those that were removed. Here is the rule for the A&I forum that was written to stop that sort of activity:

• This is a strict 'No Troll' and 'No Chest Thumping' zone. It's not the place to keep repeating your favorite topic no matter how important or relevant you may imagine it to be. Nor is it the place to tell us how this wouldn't have happened if they dove/taught the way you do.

If you want to start a thread on the evolution of dive instruction, which has been the topic of countless threads throughout the history of ScubaBoard, you are free to start it in an appropriate forum.

 

[mdb]

This thread is about a specific incident involving a specific diver. That is the topic of the thread.

In past years, threads in the A&I forum were often derailed from their specific topics by discussions such as those that were removed. Here is the rule for the A&I forum that was written to stop that sort of activity:

• This is a strict 'No Troll' and 'No Chest Thumping' zone. It's not the place to keep repeating your favorite topic no matter how important or relevant you may imagine it to be. Nor is it the place to tell us how this wouldn't have happened if they dove/taught the way you do.

If you want to start a thread on the evolution of dive instruction, which has been the topic of countless threads throughout the history of ScubaBoard, you are free to start it in an appropriate forum.

OK staff member- moderate away, Just saying that more training may have prevented this very unfortunate accident.

 

[dlofting]

Don't take uncertified students into low viz, and particularly low viz with a silty bottom, and really really don't teach students to do things on their knees when they are going to be diving in class with low viz and a silty bottom.

We did our OW certification in Vancouver, which tends to have similar visibility as the Seattle area. Fortunately it was late November/early December so the viz was great.

We followed that the next July with AOW and the visibility at that time was "nameplate"...I couldn't see my hand on the anchor chain we were descending, which was an arm's length away. This is quite typical for the May to September months in Vancouver.

I'm not sure that avoiding OW certification dives in our area, when the viz is poor is a practical option.

 

[Johnoly]

.... Just saying that more training may have prevented this....

Would that be more training for the Instructor or the Student ? There's only one correct answer.

 

[mdb]

Would that be more training for the Instructor or the Student ? There's only one correct answer.

Both.

 

[chillyinCanada]

Are we still doing analysis or pontificating?

 

[Centrals]

Another tragedy when instructor lost a student in poor viz!!
Two Republic of China instructors also managed to lose one of the two students in poor viz recently with same tragic ending.

 

[MMM]

OK staff member- moderate away, Just saying that more training may have prevented this very unfortunate accident.

Specifically what training as it pertains to this accident? Critical incident analysis looks at exactly where things went pear-shaped and then an attempt is made to identify preventative measures. Generalized statements are almost never useful in incident analysis.

 

[Wookie]

Specifically what training as it pertains to this accident? Critical incident analysis looks at exactly where things went pear-shaped and then an attempt is made to identify preventative measures. Generalized statements are almost never useful in incident analysis.

Wrong

Entire companies have safety stand downs because they have a global issue with safety. It's all a part of establishing a safety culture instead of giving lip service to safety. The question posed on the first page of this thread was "why does this keep happening?" I proposed that it keeps happening because the culture of safety in SCUBA has been ignored in favor of short term profits, not for the individual instructor, not for the dive shop in question, but for the benefit of (not even the training agency itself) a holding company that knows less about diving than the nubbiest of open water students.

But the PADI fanboys in the audience can't possibly stand to think that there is a global issue with dive training, so short-sighted moderators look through a microscope and limit the analysis to one issue, "Why did this woman die?", instead of seeing that the entire industry has issues with safety.

Why did this woman die? Because her instructor thought it was safe to train her in crap vis with inappropriate ratios. Just like in a lake in Utah. Just like on a DSD in Hawaii, Thailand, and Australia all of which have lawsuits all pending against the same training agency. Just like an open water class in a lake in Virginia. Shall I go back and list all of the dead open water students who died in poor visibility because their instructor lost student control? The same agency that goes back and throws it's instructors under the bus for making bad decisions.

One bad decision is an anomaly. Two bad decisions is bad luck. When we get past three bad decisions, I start to see a systemic problem. You don't see it because you don't really understand root cause analysis, but it's OK, Marg, just fall back on your moderator credentials to limit the conversation to a single incident. If we only look at a single incident, and only one at a time, there isn't really a problem that needs facing, is there?