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

[Aura]

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.

I'd be willing to bet that if asked in a neutral situation about this, then she would have said that obviously you need ditchable weight. It's a very different situation when an instructor is telling you that something is safe, even if you think you might have been taught something else in the past. As a young and inexperienced diver, it's very easy to have too much confident in an incompetent dive professional, I was guilty of that myself until and including my AOW course, which was more similar to the course Linnea Mills was subjected to than how an AOW course should be. Young woman, very inexperienced diver, massively overweighted, non-functioning drysuit (and other issues). Mine just ended up with 2x mild hypothermia, a few days of physical pain and a broken confidence. I reported it to PADI and they didn't seem to care.

New divers need to be able to function on their own as competent, capable and thinking divers. I know that was not the case for me after OW and even less so after AOW. With the skills and confidence people fresh out of OW seem to generally have, I doubt the majority of new OW divers would feel confident enough to challenge what an instructor is doing. And that is really too bad since there unfortunately are instructors who should not be trusted with other people's lives.

 

[Wookie]

Hey Wookie,

How do you define mental fitness?

Thankfully I don't have to.

It's up to the certifying agency to determine if their members are suited to be instructors.

Kinda like porn, I know it when I see it? I was a PADI instructor for 20 years, have the pin and glass dust collector and everything. However, even though I was a resort instructor for a year, I was never really fit to be an instructor, for the same reason I'm not fit to train dogs. I have absolutely no patience for failure to learn. So I only teach (taught) advanced class after certifying my hundred or so OW students and 1000 or so DSDs. I recognized my shortcomings as an instructor and decided I'm better off diving than teaching.

 

[Seaweed Doc]

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

Might be. I thought there was a DM or DM trainee involved. Might have been the employee I was thinking of, who had hopes of becoming a DM.

 

[Seaweed Doc]

I'd be willing to bet that if asked in a neutral situation about this, then she would have said that obviously you need ditchable weight. It's a very different situation when an instructor is telling you that something is safe, even if you think you might have been taught something else in the past. As a young and inexperienced diver, it's very easy to have too much confident in an incompetent dive professional, I was guilty of that myself until and including my AOW course, which was more similar to the course Linnea Mills was subjected to than how an AOW course should be. Young woman, very inexperienced diver, massively overweighted, non-functioning drysuit (and other issues). Mine just ended up with 2x mild hypothermia, a few days of physical pain and a broken confidence. I reported it to PADI and they didn't seem to care.

New divers need to be able to function on their own as competent, capable and thinking divers. I know that was not the case for me after OW and even less so after AOW. With the skills and confidence people fresh out of OW seem to generally have, I doubt the majority of new OW divers would feel confident enough to challenge what an instructor is doing. And that is really too bad since there unfortunately are instructors who should not be trusted with other people's lives.

I'd agree with you and not take your bet. That's why I tell students to follow their training, no matter what other folks say is safe. Including folks on ScubaBoard. "I've done it a million times and not gotten hurt" is not data.

 

[Seaweed Doc]

Thankfully I don't have to.

It's up to the certifying agency to determine if their members are suited to be instructors.

Kinda like porn, I know it when I see it? I was a PADI instructor for 20 years, have the pin and glass dust collector and everything. However, even though I was a resort instructor for a year, I was never really fit to be an instructor, for the same reason I'm not fit to train dogs. I have absolutely no patience for failure to learn. So I only teach (taught) advanced class after certifying my hundred or so OW students and 1000 or so DSDs. I recognized my shortcomings as an instructor and decided I'm better off diving than teaching.

Sounds like you're talking about a suitability to teach.

I advise a lot of pre-meds on how to get into med schools, and one of the things the med school have a really hard time judging is suitability to be a doc. You can say nice things on paper, smile and nod and talk about caring for patients in an interview, and turn out to be a jerk that will cut corners and take advantage of patients while demeaning other medical professionals (e.g., nurses). Or you're a workaholic with no way to blow off stress and you end up turning to booze or drugs once you're a doc. Sometimes that lack of suitability is obvious in an interview or essay, sometimes it's not.

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

Might be. I thought there was a DM or DM trainee involved. Might have been the employee I was thinking of, who had hopes of becoming a DM.

I'm going back to the original filing. I believe you are referring to 22-year old Seth Liston. He was an employee of Gull Dive Center (16) who was a Junior Open Water diver (105). He was a long ways off from becoming a DM. He was being used similar to what the owner of Bellevue DIvers used us dive master candidates: as full fledged DMs. When I realized this was a standards violation and asked "Hey <owner's name>, isn't this a standards violation?" His response: "La! La! La! I'm not listening"

Believe me, nothing in this lawsuit surprises me, except for Snow's decisions. Those will always flabbergast me, and even though I know Snow personally, as dumb as her decisions were, it would be far dumber to ever discuss the case with anyone as there is no statute of limitations (my understanding) for murder.

Sounds like you're talking about a suitability to teach.

I advise a lot of pre-meds on how to get into med schools, and one of the things the med school have a really hard time judging is suitability to be a doc. You can say nice things on paper, smile and nod and talk about caring for patients in an interview, and turn out to be a jerk that will cut corners and take advantage of patients while demeaning other medical professionals (e.g., nurses). Or you're a workaholic with no way to blow off stress and you end up turning to booze or drugs once you're a doc. Sometimes that lack of suitability is obvious in an interview or essay, sometimes it's not.

You never know how a person (or oneself) will react when the kaka hits the fan. Then you find out what people/organizations are made out of. You might also find out how ethical they are.

 

[yle]

Just to add my two cents to the speculation of why Snow made the long list of poor decisions that culminated in this incident: if I recall correctly, she finished her IDC in January 2020 and then returned to Montana. Probably not much scuba diving in January or February in Montana. And then covid arrived and there wasn't much of anything going on anywhere.

Which means by the time Linnea met Snow in late October, it had been nine months since Snow had finished her training and very likely had not yet taught a class, had zero experience with students. That nine months is plenty of time to forget everything about that "duty of care" part of her IDC. (I also did my IDC at RR... and while I think the experience, as with any scuba course, depends heavily on the instructor, my CD hammered us throughout the course on our responsibility to take care of our students.)

Why did she forget everything? It's very likely in January she passed her IE and demonstrated proficient knowledge just fine. But nine months of not using that knowledge and likely zero experience can cause that training to fade. I'm not suggesting this is an excuse, only an explanation.

 

[Omisson]

The PADI standards require direct supervision by the instructor during AOW for any dives deeper than 60ft, and direct supervision shallower than 60 ft for certain Adventure Dives.

You are confusing the standards issue with whether or not an action is a causal contributor to an accident. This isn't a "strict liability" issue- its about fundamentals of diving at issue with nominally certified divers. The standards are not where the problem rooted in this case... as I think ALMOST everyone now concedes... except those who refuse to address the facts.

 

[Omisson]

said some CMAS rah-rah nonsense about "the good old days" of diving.....

And if we were to follow the NAUI or CMAS standards of 1968 only fit males between 18-30 would ever survive a dive class. But the sport has developed a recreational bent to it that allows for casual divers opening up the undersea world to ALOT more folks.... I think that is generally a good thing.

While the WRTC standards that govern ALL scuba diving agencies (except it seems CMAS) hasn't always been idea, the reality is that it has not produced different accident results - at least according to the DAN statistics. The fatality rate for divers is the same across the boards.....

Basically meaning the standards from CMAS, SSI, PADI, NAUI or SDI.... etc... have resulted in no net appreciable change in diver fatality rates over all.... go figure....

 

[yle]

The standards are not where the problem rooted in this case... as I think ALMOST everyone now concedes... except those who refuse to address the facts.

Seems that many of us (i.e. instructors) tend to see incidents like this in terms of standards violations because that's our only "black and white" reference: we know the list of standards and we can identify when standards were met or broken.

I'm sure the "black and white" of the legal system will supersede that of PADI standards in this case, but very few of us are familiar with that perspective. We're interested (at least I am...) if you want to share your thoughts.