Teen drowns at North Texas scuba park

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TxHockeyGuy

Contributor
Messages
642
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Location
Dallas, TX
# of dives
50 - 99
On Sunday May 6 2007 at CSSP (Clear Springs Scuba Park) a female OW student presumed to be approximately 15-16 years of age was pulled unconscious and not breathing from the water. I have it on good authority that she under and not breathing for 15 minutes before being pulled to the surface. She was care flighted to Children's Medical Center of Dallas where as of 4:30 PM Sunday May 6 she was reported to be STILL ALIVE. Apparently they were able to resuscitate her however her condition is unknown.

I was at the park during this incident and have heard several variations of what happened and I'd be willing to bet none of them are 100% accurate so I am not posting any of that information. However I believe the following information to be accurate and reliable. The girl was with an OW class of 12 divers according to various eye witnesses and there were 2 instructors working the class. The visibility at the park was between 8-12 ft at the time of the incident. I do not know at what depth this class was at but below 25 ft it was very cold, but once again I do not know what depth the class was at. Unfortunately the initial calls for help were dismissed as a rescue class improperly yelling help. I heard the calls for help and they sounded anything but urgent and quite staged, unfortunately this was not the case. I saw the group at the surface when they were calling for help and no one was waiving their arms or appeared to be in any distress. If I have to ever call for help I will be adding something to the effect that this is not a drill.

EDIT: Removed intro paragraph about this being posted in the Texas Swamp Divers Forum after move and corrected some spelling.
 
Holy crap man. Not breathing for 15, and still alive? That's friggin amazing...
 
Good job with the incident report, HockeyGuy. When we spoke with Robert around 7:00 pm, he did confirm that the 16 yr old girl has a pulse, but we know little beyond that. We join Texdiveguy in sending our prayers for this diver and her family.
 
One correction. I have learned that the accident occurred after the girl had already certified earlier in the day and it was her first post certification dive. Apparently she was buddied up with her father on this dive and diving with a group when they became separated. I also now have confirmation that it was the father who was calling for help.

This is a perfect example of how far off eye witness accounts can be.
 
This is so sad to hear, especially that it is someone so young. I am praying for her.

When I did my Rescue we joked a lot about having to deal with EMS when others at the park thought our exercises were the real thing. Or worse, what a terrible time to have a real accident and have everybody dismiss our shouts as an exercise. Maybe it's time Rescue classes changed their methods. Ideally, you would have the class when no others were at the lake but that is not always practical. Perhaps classes should yell something silly like "good morning" so that people come to know that "help" unmistakably means it's the real thing, no exceptions.
 
ReefHound:
This is so sad to hear, especially that it is someone so young. I am praying for her.

When I did my Rescue we joked a lot about having to deal with EMS when others at the park thought our exercises were the real thing. Or worse, what a terrible time to have a real accident and have everybody dismiss our shouts as an exercise. Maybe it's time Rescue classes changed their methods. Ideally, you would have the class when no others were at the lake but that is not always practical. Perhaps classes should yell something silly like "good morning" so that people come to know that "help" unmistakably means it's the real thing, no exceptions.

While I know myself and many others thought this was a rescue class I don't know if that had any impact on the situation. I saw the tarps being picked up where the OW class was being held after the incident so it is likely the instructors were still on hand. I also believe it is quite likely those instructors responded to the calls for help, they surely would have recognized their own students and known it was no drill.

That being said if I hear calls for help in the future, I'm more than likely calling 911 immediately rather than trying to figure out if it is a rescue class or not. If they were calling for help inappropriately they can explain to EMS and the authorities why they were doing so. As for your suggestion about yelling "good morning" or something else very silly during rescue classes I know that many rescue classes do just that. During my OW class and AOW class, I haven't taken rescue yet, we were instructed to yell pizza or call for dominos. We were specifically told that we were not to yell help for this very reason.
 
TxHockeyGuy:
.... we were instructed to yell pizza or call for dominos. We were specifically told that we were not to yell help for this very reason.

That's exactly what we used to do....yell "Pizza!" "Call Dominoes!"....so there's no mistaking a real emergency situation.
 
An instructor that has a lick of common sense will not have the "panicked diver" in a rescue class use the word "help" when calling for assistance. You use a surrogate word throughout the class, so that it is second nature to use it instead of the word "help" during training. I would be willing to bet that this is actually protocol with the various dive training organizations. Any instructors care to chime in?

One accident and one fatality in one month at CSSP. Unbelievable.
 
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