Two divers die at Wazee Lake, WI

[proaudio55]

Does anyone have an update on this incident?
It's been 2 full years now and I can't find anything other than the sketchy reports that date back to 2010. This whole story just doesn't add up to me...

As I understand the situation:
~Diver 1 has a medical emergency at or near 200'
~Diver 2, his buddy, panics or makes the decision to skip decompression stops. He rapidly surfaces both of them
~A 3rd diver is apparently part of the group, but didn't go below 140' (supposedly low on air and/or leaking equipment)
~All of them surface at nearly the same time.

-Diver 1 died from his medical emergency
-Diver 2 died of DCS, attempting a rescue
-Diver 3 also made a rapid assent and suffers non-fatal DCS

I just don't understand why the dive wasn't "called" once Diver #3 suffered an equipment malfunction. Does anyone have an update on this incident? I find it hard to believe that a heart attack and catastrophic equipment failure would all happen simultaneously on a single dive.

 

[DA Aquamaster]

I've always marveled at this kind of accident and the emotional/humanitarian arguments that surface. I noted in one of the versions of the Chris and Chrissy Rouse accident that one of the prime motivators of the creation of a multiple fatality accident was the inability, or perhaps unwillingness to recognize when the point was reached where someone was going to have to die in order to ensure a reasonable chance that the other team mate would survive.

It sounds harsh when it involves someone you love, but if you are going to engage in overhead diving with either a hard overhead and/or a significant deco obligation, you need to suck it up and do some hard thinking well in advance as the middle of an ongoing crisis will not be the best time to consider it and discuss it.

An overriding concept in any kind of rescue is not to get carried away by events and turn a single fatality event into a multiple fatality event. That means that you, as the team mate and/or potential rescuer, may be making the necessary decision to cut the team losses and not elect to risk more lives trying to save a single member.

In this case, it's also just a matter of playing the percentages. Herculean and or heroic efforts to try to save someone in cardiac arrest underwater are statistically almost certain to fail. If you have a heart attack under water in an overhead environment, you are almost certainly going to die, so you need to accept that risk. And if you don't want to accept that risk, then don't dive. Certainly don't expect your technical diving team mates to blow off significant deco and endanger their lives in a futile effort to save yours.

What bothers me is that this discussion does not seem to happen in technical diving training with the result that team mates feel "obligated" to do really stupid and dangerous stuff in an effort to save a victim. We might want to have the discussion to at least discuss the realities in terms of the extremely negative outcomes of these well intended but misguided rescue efforts.

 

[KD8NPB]

From what I've learned so far, the factors that most guarantee survival are:
1.) Have an emergency plan. Follow your plan.
2.) For riskier diving, have a support team.
3.) Have a support team who is CPR / O2 delivery certified, with enough O2 to support all divers until help arrives. Typically, the maximum amount of O2 required for each dive is 30 minutes. At the DAN specified 15L/min, you would need about 450 liters per diver. A Luxfer Jumbo-D holds 647 liters. This is part of #1. Know the response times for Coast Guard / EMS, know how long it will take you to transport the casualty.

Worst of all, as DA Aquamaster mentioned, do your triage underwater. If the victim has little to no chance of survival, and saving him will potentially cause death or injury to rescue personnel, do NOT risk it.

 

[Duke Dive Medicine]

Proaudio, that pretty well sums up what happened. Cannot give much detail as we were peripherally involved in the case, but according to a credible source at the time, diver 3 initially chose not to go below 140'. The equipment malfunction occurred toward the end of his dive.

 

[CT-Rich]

I don't mind getting sick to save a life and arming myself with the information and talking with my divemates on an appropreiate emergency ascent rate doesn't seem like a bad idea in any circumstance.

Read "the Shadow Divers" by Robert Kurson. It gives a clear idea what violating the rules can be like. Diver two nobly put himself on the line for a very unpleasant death... It was tragically unnecessary. His friend died either as a result of heart attack or DCI. diver two died of DCI. I don't imagine diver one would have liked diver two to leave his family behind. This is why the sport has a traditional 130 ft limit. go deep enough for long enough and there is no easy exit. The same is true for caves or wrecks or the Andrea Doria or climbing Everest. I feel for the families of both men.

 

[DandyDon]

Read "the Shadow Divers" by Robert Kurson. It gives a clear idea what violating the rules can be like. Diver two nobly put himself on the line for a very unpleasant death... It was tragically unnecessary. His friend died either as a result of heart attack or DCI. diver two died of DCI. I don't imagine diver one would have liked diver two to leave his family behind. This is why the sport has a traditional 130 ft limit. go deep enough for long enough and there is no easy exit. The same is true for caves or wrecks or the Andrea Doria or climbing Everest. I feel for the families of both men.

Go back a step further to the comment he addressed...

Even on land, the first thing the responder does is to assess the area for possible danger to one's self. If you would put yourself in dangerous situation (down power lines etc.) the best thing to do is call 911. No matter how badly you want to help someone, skipping this step can result in two people needing help instead of one. If you're going to blow off you're deco stops, it's the same thing, even though it may sound cold and heartless.

We had a heroic 4 year old boy save a 3 year old girls life this week in Texas, but the outcome might have been better if he had called for help instead: Xander Vento, 4-Year-Old Texas Boy Who Saved Girl From Drowning, Taken Off Life Support