Suit filed in case of "Girl dead, boy injured at Glacier National Park

[wetb4igetinthewater]

Again, skills can be learned.

Agreed.

Mental fitness to instruct may be harder to evaluate.

Good point. Hence my recommendation that will be never implemented for apprenticeships.

A DM needs nothing more than skills.

I do believe that addressing/identifying passive panic needs more emphasis, and recommendations to simply terminate the dive if the customer is overwhelmed. If they can't communicate basic things like cylinder pressure, just end the dive.

 

[Wookie]

Agreed.

Good point. Hence my recommendation that will be never implemented for apprenticeships.

I do believe that addressing/identifying passive panic needs more emphasis, and recommendations to simply terminate the dive if the customer is overwhelmed. If they can't communicate basic things like cylinder pressure, just end the dive.

I happen to agree with you.

How do we come up with a way to objectively evaluate how a random instructor will act in a given situation?

We’ve all, including Gull and PADI, said that Snow acted inappropriately. We’ve heard from you that her skills were right on. We’ve heard from the marine director at RR that her class was taught in accordance with standards. I have no reason to dispute that. I can ask their training director, I am well acquainted with Kell. I have no doubt that he would tell us the same thing.

So where was the breakdown? Dan made a pretty good case with Chris backing him up that it likely wasn’t student ratios, you observed her skills during her AI and said they were solid, and the RR course director says she was taught to standards, no question.

The only thing missing is experience (I’m experienced enough to know that I can’t control (directly supervise) more than 2 students at a time. I did NOT know that when I was teaching 16 DSDs a day with 2 assistants. The other thing missing is fitness to teach. I couldn’t teach cursive writing to 3rd graders, I’d end up sticking a pencil in their eye. Debbie Snow couldn’t teach drysuit to anyone as it turns out, but how would she know that?

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

I happen to agree with you.

How do we come up with a way to objectively evaluate how a random instructor will act in a given situation?

We’ve all, including Gull and PADI, said that Snow acted inappropriately. We’ve heard from you that her skills were right on. We’ve heard from the marine director at RR that her class was taught in accordance with standards. I have no reason to dispute that. I can ask their training director, I am well acquainted with Kell. I have no doubt that he would tell us the same thing.

So where was the breakdown? Dan made a pretty good case with Chris backing him up that it likely wasn’t student ratios, you observed her skills during her AI and said they were solid, and the RR course director says she was taught to standards, no question.

The only thing missing is experience (I’m experienced enough to know that I can’t control (directly supervise) more than 2 students at a time. I did NOT know that when I was teaching 16 DSDs a day with 2 assistants. The other thing missing is fitness to teach. I couldn’t teach cursive writing to 3rd graders, I’d end up sticking a pencil in their eye. Debbie Snow couldn’t teach drysuit to anyone as it turns out, but how would she know that?

I didn't say Debbie's skills were solid. I was brought in to help on one day of her AI training. I saw she was being trained to perform skills neutrally buoyant and trimmed. I did not see her perform underwater scuba kit and removal for example. My memory is faint as that was a number of years ago. But I extrapolate that she was able to conduct skills fairly well neutrally buoyant and trimmed based upon the IDC Staff Instructor training her. Though we do butt heads on allowing students to start on the knees. I reject this as you all know.

I have never dived with Snow.

She did provide shore support in one of my open water courses where she saw me I weight every single student separately. As I said, I have never dove with her, but it is my impression she did have a fair bit of cold water diving experience in the Puget Sound. She did assist in a pool session and saw my students being taught neutrally buoyant and trimmed.

How much she absorbed/embraced from me the importance of proper weighting and trim, I cannot say. Based upon the events of that tragic day, it seems not at all.

If she was trained at RR to teach neutrally buoyant and trimmed, I then sincerely don't understand how this tragedy took place.

 

[Hoyden]

...

If she was trained at RR to teach neutrally buoyant and trimmed, I then sincerely don't understand how this tragedy took place.

When I took my instructor course, my CD put the fear of losing a student deep in my heart. There had been a recent OW training fatality in our area and we were taught to never be out of reach of any student who was doing skills. It took me years to relax even a tiny bit when I had students in the water and I still think about it on every dive with a student. It is clear from her behavior that Snow did not have this feeling. I took my IDC Staff instructor class at Rainbow Reef which meant that I was there for an entire IDC. They definitely teach to the standards and I don't see how anyone could be as seemingly unclear on how things should be done to the standard as Snow was after a RR IDC. The thing that they did not do was to put the fear of losing a student in the new instructors that they were training. Maybe no one is doing that any more.

 

[Vicko]

You don't need to have a 3 year instructor apprenticeship to know that putting 15kg of lead on to a tiny girl and sending her diving in a dry suit with no inflator hose is bad.

 

[formernuke]

I will tell you that RR might be up to "standards" but it is far from good, everything is on one knees. Might meet standards but far from good.

Further I have told you that I personally have knowledge of one of there instructors doesn't even know basic diving. I didn't see Snow training but based on what I did personally see the above which makes me seriously question her training.

 

[Angelo Farina]

@Angelo Farina you bring up some interesting points. I wasn't around (as a diver, at least) in the halcyon days of yore, so I can't comment on the training back then. I have heard stories of it, though, and a few things come to mind. First, the hardcore training of old definitely seemed to have some items/skills in it of dubious value.

Yes, some parts of these very long courses needed to be cut away or to be moved to additional and optional classes.
The 2 months with the ARO in the pool was the most controvertial part, as no one was using this obsolete CC rebreather anymore for diving in the sea, it was used only in the pool for training. The good thing with the ARO was learning breathing control and neutral buoyancy and perfect trim (which was VERTICAL with the ARO).
It was also used for teaching efficient hand sculling (not paddling), with the same movements used in synchro swimming and water polo, which was considered the basic propulsion to be used inside caves and wrecks.
I was one of the (young) instructors pushing for removing ARO training and replacing it with BCD training. In the end we succeeded in this..

Second, the physical fitness and mental toughness required for some of the old training acted as a filter of sorts on who decided to pursue dive training in the first place. I'm guessing that students - and thus, ultimately, certified divers - were disproportionately young, fit men.

Actually not. We had just a 30% succes rate because students were often over-the-age, fatty, unsporty, with bad mental habits and definitely not properly motivated.
More than half were females, diving was fashionable at the time, and those girls and ladies wanted to pursue this sport for being photo models underwater (or photographers).
Lotti Haas was their role model...
I remember a class of 20 where ALL students were females... Only 3 were certified, the others were just posing.

Third, and very much related, is that most students and divers were people who were serious about diving.

Again, absolutely not. This was true only for those 30% who managed to complete the course and being certified.
But then PADI arrived, and we have seen all those students who did not pass the CMAS course being happily certified by PADI and proudly showing a number of specialy badges glued to their suits...

 

[Seaweed Doc]

I won’t argue a single point, and I was never a Course Director, but I don’t know if mental fitness to dive (or be an instructor) is a requirement for completion of any course.

As an instructor, I am qualified to evaluate skills, but evaluate mental fitness to dive?

As a liveaboard operator I’d have failed half my clients.

Hey Wookie,

How do you define mental fitness? I can see several aspects to this:

1. Generally intelligent enough to understand the physics/equipment/physiology etc. of diving. That is, "book smart." I don't have any idea (obviously) of how Snow did on her IE classroom exam, but there's at least a modicum of quality control. (Cue up folks pointing at how easy the IE written exam is....) E.g., did Snow not understand intellectually that you have to inflate a dry suit at depth?

2. Able to apply what is learned in the classroom to actually diving. Similar, but it is a bit different. Did it not occur to Snow on the beach in the heat of the moment that you can't dive without a dry suit inflator for reasons she might have known on some level?

3. Compos mentis. Not crazy, and capable of making good decisions. That's tough: A person might be sane today and crazy at the beach. Was Snow distracted to the point of making bad decisions or perhaps a closet sociopath?

4. Related to #3, can a person maintain their "mental fitness" when stressed?

I'm applying this to the instructor, but I suppose you could say the same about the student.

 

[Seaweed Doc]

It strikes me in all the comments about instructors, PADI (or other agencies), and particular IDCs/CDs that there are multiple failure points:

1. Poor standards at the agency level.
2. Poor training at the IDC/CD level. (A candidate passes the IE, but no more.)
3. Shops fail to provide appropriate guidance to newby instructors. I'm thinking more here of other shop instructors showing the newby how to cut corners on safety, not just a probationary period to see how they do at first.
4. The individual instructor blowing off what they'd learned. So failure at the instructor level.
5. Students (or later, certified divers) not doing what they were trained to do. E.g., how often do we tell students never to hold their breath? I can't imagine any instructor anywhere not emphasizing that. The student may never bolt for the surface holding their breath during training or show any inclination to do so. Yet on occasion it happens and a diver dies.

In order of culpability in the Snow case, I'd list it as follows:

1. (Most culpable) Snow. We've rehashed for the duration of this thread how many standards she broke. And she showed lack of situational awareness as the accident unfolded.

2. Gull Dive. They should have had somebody checking for dry suit certification or appropriate training before facilitating the sale of the dry suit. Yes, it was a private sale. But they were completely aware of what was going on.

3. The agency/IDC/CD. I don't know where the fault lies here. PADI has changed a lot of standards since the accident, but ultimately I'm not sure those changes would have made a difference in this case. So many existing standards were broken that it seems odd to claim that different standards would have mattered here. The bigger issue in my mind is whether PADI, the IDC, and the CD are rigorous enough in evaluating candidates if a walking disaster like Snow can pass. Or me, for that matter! (And, as I recall, it's not all on the IE. The CD rates candidates along the way and doesn't have to pass them as I understand. It's easy to fake it on a test, tougher to fake it for multiple weeks of training.)

4. The DM trainee. OK, so I made an ordered list. He was the next most experienced diver if I recall correctly. I can't really blame him, but at some point you have to stick up for what you know is safe even if others say it's fine. I try to hammer this in to my OW students. Just because somebody else is more experienced, if they want you to do something you don't feel is safe, don't do it. Now that I think about it, I should start doing this with DM trainees: If the instructor is doing something you don't feel is safe, walk away.

5. The dive shop/instructor that trained the victim initially may have some culpability. Insufficient ditchable weight is an obvious problem. PADI materials and tests talk about the ability to ditch your weight quickly in an emergency as being the most important features of a weighting system. That the victim didn't back out with rocks in the pockets makes me wonder how she was trained. Was this due to bad training, or did the victim ignore the training? Can't say.

6. The victim. She had no way to know that the combination of issues was going to be deadly. She was also relying on more experienced divers to advise her.

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

4. The DM trainee. OK, so I made an ordered list. He was the next most experienced diver if I recall correctly. I can't really blame him, but at some point you have to stick up for what you know is safe even if others say it's fine. I try to hammer this in to my OW students. Just because somebody else is more experienced, if they want you to do something you don't feel is safe, don't do it. Now that I think about it, I should start doing this with DM trainees: If the instructor is doing something you don't feel is safe, walk away.

DM trainee? You mean the shop employee that only had junior OW certification? Is my memory that bad?