Took a ride up from 80'

[flots am]

Worst case: You tell his widow that his regulator was bubbling a little so you shut his tank off, he scewed up and didn't stay with me, and he kicked my mask off when he panicked from no air and by the time I found my mask, put it on, floated to the surface looked around, vented the BC and then swam down 80 ft looking for him... well he was dead..

People sitting at home seem to have a skewed sense of how long it takes for everything to turn into sh**. All these suggestions to turn this or that on or off, or do some other thing are all just distractions that will achieve nothing except increase the chance of death or injury.

I've done a small number of actual rescues in my diving career, and can tell you there's only one thing I give a crap about: The man or woman I have a death-grip on is going to breathe something safe, arrive safely at the surface, and stay there until I get his/her ass back on a boat or the shore.

Everything else is just a distraction. I couldn't care less if the tank gets contaminated or the reg gets water in it or there are lots of bubbles or whatever. It's not my problem and it doesn't matter.

flots.

 

[NAM001]

Theres nothing more stressful than the continous reminder that something is wrong. Once the stressed diver is calm on your octo, I dont see how things could become worse by cycling the air. I guess it depends on how stressed the diver remains. I would think that the stop of freeflow would be a calming factor.

 

[bullfroger]

Was this in a quarry with cold water and could it have been first stage freeze up? and could that have made the inflator run away too? When that happens the free flow is violent not just bubbling.

 

[FinnMom]

I guess you could have tried yanking on his inflator hose to dump air, but I would not be surprised if everything happened so fast that the only thought you had time for before reaching the surface was "oh shi".

Trying to stop the freeflow very frequently will work, and it would make excellent sense with a more experienced diver or one who was acting exceptionally calm. BUT with 2 persons both very new to that depth my 1st thought would be to improve the situation before either of them had the time to decide they were frightened. Panic is the greatest, most serious danger and having 2 students to one of you is a sobering situation. My thought would be to get them back to their comfort zone so at least only the freeflow student would be likely to feel exceptional stress & maybe do something unfortunate.

I would have taken the standard moment to get squared for the ascent (the idea being to convey to the student/OOA diver the idea that everything is OK and under control), but then started up. Unfortunately the flowing reg might well get get so cooled by the rushing air that it will never cease flowing even in warmer water, but with 2 students I would just want them up. Very preferably up at only a normal rate of speed, but better up than down.

 

[flots am]

Theres nothing more stressful than the continous reminder that something is wrong. Once the stressed diver is calm on your octo, I dont see how things could become worse by cycling the air.

They're just bubbles. The victim won't die from bubbles.

He could easily die if the rescuer gets distracted from the task at hand. Which you'll notice is exactly what happened in post #1.

The rescuer couldn't process everything that was happening fast enough, and suddenly the victim was gone. This could have very easily turned out very badly.

You'll notice that your OW class didn't have you screwing with valves when practicing your skills. That's because the things that are necessary to do require attention to detail. There's no advantage to tossing in irrelevant and possibly dangerous procedures (as noted by dumpsterDiver).

While it's nice to keep the victim calm, "calm" takes a backseat to "alive". First you keep the victim alive. Once that's assured, you can work on making things quieter.

flots.

 

[Steve_C]

Could you explain why returning to the up line was not an option? Seems that would have simplified things. Or am I missing something.

 

[KeithG]

Question: Why did the OP donate his primary? That action physically linked the 2 divers. This does not seem to be a sensible first step. I have no idea what the training manuals dictate in this situation.

If MY primary starts to freeflow, I believe my brain will tell me to switch to MY octo. That is why I think I (paid all that extra money to) have it. Once on my octo, I will still be physically independent of my dive buddy. I should also have a stable gas supply so that I think I would take a few seconds to take stock of the complete situation before I made my next decision.

A while ago, my dive buddy experienced a "small" split in her primary reg hose. She switched to octo, came over to me and pointed at her primary (like I did not notice the huge spew of bubbles). We spent a few seconds making sure we were calm and then closely monitored her air pressure as we slowly ascended to 15 feet. No panic. Air loss was very slow. She remained on her own equipment and we made our way back to the boat @ 15 feet.

A second question for the peanut gallery: How much time do you have if your reg starts to free flow? How many divers are aware of how long (or short) time they have? Without this tidbit of knowledge, most divers may be prone to initiate a panic ascent. Before our issue I had no idea. I have now forgotten the worst case answer (around 2 minutes or less?). We had much longer than that due to the small size of the leak.

 

[flots am]

Question: Why did the OP donate his primary? That action physically linked the 2 divers.

It makes perfect sense. When diver needs help, it's really hard to know exactly what the complete problem is within a few seconds. Handing a supposedly OOA diver a pony, for example, and waving goodbye, is just supplying an opportunity to have the problem re-occur.

An OW diver asking for an air share might indicate out-of-air, bad gas, hard-breathing reg, bad reg, general anxiety, bad skills or some other problem.

Sharing air, besides giving the other diver known-good breathing gas, also gives you physical control of the situation and the ability to do a safe ascent to the surface, and then figure out what the problem is, on the surface, where there are now two of you. A diver doing a solo emergency ascent is taking a big risk once on the surface. A large percentage of fatalities start this way.

A diver who wants an air share has essentially said "Something bad is happening that I can't handle alone and need your help", and an air share means you're now physically connected. Once things calm down, you can safely end the dive for both of you.

flots.

 

[Steve_C]

A second question for the peanut gallery: How much time do you have if your reg starts to free flow? How many divers are aware of how long (or short) time they have? Without this tidbit of knowledge, most divers may be prone to initiate a panic ascent.

A few times when trying out a new configuration or wet suit in the local quarry at the end of the dive I have flloated in the water column deliberately free flowing my other reg to get me down to about 250-300 psi to do a weight check. Usually starting with around 1200-1500 psi. It seemed to take a long time. Even stopped and rested my hand before continuing with the purging once. It was long enough to get bored and hope it got down there. So there is some time.

 

[Freewillow]

What I do not understand is why the third diver needed to make a safety stop for a dive that was aborted 5 to 6 minutes after its start?