Why don't we emphasize cesa more??

[lamont]

Bingo you nailed it, but not in the way you intented. Reality is that all the gas planning, all the buddy pairs and all the rest of the things learned and practiced to prevent OOA will not prove effective 100% of the time and divers will go OOA. Reality didn't read the training manual.

I can't recall the last time I've read about an OOA fatality in a cave that wasn't due to lack of training or violating training and entirely preventable. I've never seen an accident analysis done on cave diving fatality where the result was "diver spontaneously ran out of gas and died".

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

Bingo you nailed it, but not in the way you intented. Reality is that all the gas planning, all the buddy pairs and all the rest of the things learned and practiced to prevent OOA will not prove effective 100% of the time and divers will go OOA. Reality didn't read the training manual.

How do you know that's not what I intended?

I teach CESA ... of course I do, it's a required part of the NAUI OW curriculum (despite what Nemrod and others in this thread have stated). But ask yourself HOW it's taught. The students know it's coming, they wait till they're nice and relaxed, take a deep breath, and "aaaaaahhhhhhh" all the way to the surface.

Enter reality ... you won't know it's coming. Chances are better than even that when you go to take that next breath you won't get any. Now you've got only a little bit of air in your lungs to "aaaahhhhh" with, and you're stressing. Even if you've practiced the drill, it ain't gonna happen the way you practiced it. Stress will not be your friend, and panic is the real danger. No matter how practiced you might be, once you start kicking toward the surface, you're gonna have to REMEMBER not to let instinct control you ... because if it does, you WILL hold your breath.

Now let's look at the other side of the coin ... most agencies don't teach any kind of gas management skills. They claim it's not necessary. But those are the very skills that would've ... in most cases ... prevented this situation from happening in the first place. Yeah, I know .. o-rings can blow, first stages can fail, etc. etc. ... but look at reality. The vast majority of OOA's are the simple result of diver error ... people not paying attention to their gauge, or overestimating how deep they can safely go on their air supply. If you only teach them CESA, they'll go down assuming that if anything bad happens they can always just blow and go ... unfortunately, they may overestimate their ability to use that skill from the depths where problems occur.

The lady that Lamont tried to rescue ran out of gas at 100 feet ... a depth she never should've even gone to with the gas supply she was carrying. She was attempting a dive profile that would've kept her at that depth for several minutes. She wasn't even close to making it. I've helped other divers on that same dive who suddenly found themselves deep and into the red zone. It's not uncommon.

What are these divers missing? Not the CESA ... every one of them had that skill in their OW class. Not a single one of them got enough gas management knowledge to know better than to go deep on a small tank ... and most of them hadn't a clue what their actual consumption rate was.

BTW - I'm not just talking about new divers here. I had to rescue a DMC down on that same line once when he almost ran out of air. And the lady that died had a reasonable amount of experience ... somewhere in the area of 80-100 dives.

Because we teach CESA, and not gas management, to these people in their OW class, we leave them with the impression that this is their FIRST bailout option ... not their last. Sure, we also teach them how to accept and donate air to a buddy ... but somewhere along the line we've failed to teach them adequate buddy skills to make it a practical alternative.

And when I say "we" ... I'm talking about ALL of the major training agencies ... not just the big "P". Individual instructors can ... and often do ... step up to the plate. But it's the agencies who have to mandate that this stuff gets taught.

I think most of us who are instructors teach ... in Rescue class ... that the best accident is the one that never happens, because we recognized the potential problem and took the necessary precautions to avoid it. We need to start this train of thought rolling in OW ... and provide the necessary tools to focus on prevention, rather than on reaction.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[captain]

I can't recall the last time I've read about an OOA fatality in a cave that wasn't due to lack of training or violating training and entirely preventable. I've never seen an accident analysis done on cave diving fatality where the result was "diver spontaneously ran out of gas and died".

I think that the transport aviation industry is very good comparison to cave and tech diving. You have multiple heads with several thousand hours experience in the cockpit to solve problems. You have multi engine aircraft with double and somtimes tripple redundant systems. Pilots have medicals every six months, their training is ongoing. There is government regulation in just about everything related to aviation, how many hours between inspection, overhauls, controllers on the ground direct them, it goes on and on. Using your and Soggy's and a few others logic airliners should never crash but they do on a regular basis for a variety of reasons, pilot error by far the most common reason, weather, mechnical failure. controller error,etc. The investigation usually finds a number of events leading up to the accident, none of which by themselves would cause an accident. In most cases the cause is determined and a change in a rule, the design of a part, extra inspections. etc is instatuted but the crashes still happen and they always will because we can't predict all that could happen and when. To believe otherwise is lunacy.

 

[mdb]

I think that the transport aviation industry is very good comparison to cave and tech diving. You have multiple heads with several thousand hours experience in the cockpit to solve problems. You have multi engine aircraft with double and somtimes tripple redundant systems. Pilots have medicals every six months, their training is ongoing. There is government regulation in just about everything related to aviation, how many hours between inspection, overhauls, controllers on the ground direct them, it goes on and on. Using your and Soggy's and a few others logic airliners should never crash but they do on a regular basis for a variety of reasons, pilot error by far the most common reason, weather, mechnical failure. controller error,etc. The investigation usually finds a number of events leading up to the accident, none of which by themselves would cause an accident. In most cases the cause is determined and a change in a rule, the design of a part, extra inspections. etc is instatuted but the crashes still happen and they always will because we can't predict all that could happen and when. To believe otherwise is lunacy.

Exactly: "I have done all my skills and drills it won't happen to me" is, obviously, as you posted, "lunacy".

 

[300bar]

Somehow I struggle with the logic of choosing to go 45 feet for a breath of air when perfectly good gas is right in front of you.

If anybody I dove with were making those kinds of poor choices, I would be deeply concerned about their ability to think through even the most basic issues that may face while diving.

Agreed,I would not make the same choice myself,but remember this diver just finished his last OW dive 2 hours before this happend and in his last dive he had to do the Cesa(a perfect one may I add)I think this was just the first thing that popped in to his mind.As for the POOR CHOISES I still have to see the one that makes the right choise after only 4 OW dives.

As the DM debriefed his he told us that he was just hearing this very loud hissing and rumbling sound behind his head and could not think of any thing else.

But he is alive and kicking and still is a happy diver.

 

[lamont]

The lady that Lamont tried to rescue ran out of gas at 100 feet ... a depth she never should've even gone to with the gas supply she was carrying. She was attempting a dive profile that would've kept her at that depth for several minutes. She wasn't even close to making it. I've helped other divers on that same dive who suddenly found themselves deep and into the red zone. It's not uncommon.

To be technical, she went LOA at 100 fsw and made a direct ascent and made it to about 10 fsw before going OOA. Her buddy mentioned multiple times to multiple different rescuers, who were concerned about her DCS risk, that they had made a safe ascent up to ~10 fsw.

 

[lamont]

I think that the transport aviation industry is very good comparison to cave and tech diving. You have multiple heads with several thousand hours experience in the cockpit to solve problems. You have multi engine aircraft with double and somtimes tripple redundant systems. Pilots have medicals every six months, their training is ongoing. There is government regulation in just about everything related to aviation, how many hours between inspection, overhauls, controllers on the ground direct them, it goes on and on. Using your and Soggy's and a few others logic airliners should never crash but they do on a regular basis for a variety of reasons, pilot error by far the most common reason, weather, mechnical failure. controller error,etc. The investigation usually finds a number of events leading up to the accident, none of which by themselves would cause an accident. In most cases the cause is determined and a change in a rule, the design of a part, extra inspections. etc is instatuted but the crashes still happen and they always will because we can't predict all that could happen and when. To believe otherwise is lunacy.

Okay, when was the last time a commercial jumbo jet ran out of fuel in mid air?

 

[Gilldiver]

Okay, when was the last time a commercial jumbo jet ran out of fuel in mid air?

1987 or 88 I think. It was a brand new Air Canada 757 where the amount of fuel calculation was screwed between english and metric conversions. The pilot did a dead stick landing on an old fighter strip that had been converted to a drag strip. There was one of those Wednesday night moves made about it.

Acctualy, this event, the Challenger disaster, and the Mars Explorer (also an english/metric F-up) are used in our training about how human factors and assumptions can, and will bite hard.

As for the original question: I usually leave these types of threads alone as with A-holes, everybody has an opinion.

But, I know there are some divers who are in boxes now because they were so afraid of a quick assent that they drowned. Bent or hurt and alive on the surface I can work on, dead on the bottom is only a body recovery or a fish feeding station

Now back to the analogy to flying and airplane, so lets take it a bit further - An out of air emergency accent is like a parachute to a pilot. You can have the best training, best aircraft, plan your trip to exacting standards, calculate you fuel and reserves, but still put on a parachute. Why? Because it is an item of last resort.

CESA is an act of last resort, always has been, always will be because sometimes the Shi* hits the fan and there is no options. So yes, it should be taught, but only as a last resort after all the things everyone else has been yelling about.

 

[cowboyneal]

In order of preference:

1. Don't run out of air (manage your gas);
2. Dive your plan (be with your buddy (and group) and be attentive so if you or they go OOA, another person is right there);
3. Know how and when to accomplish a CESA so if neither 1 nor 2 is possible, you can go for 3 with less potential for serious injury or death...

So, 13 pages of posts to argue about that? Silly...

 

[mdb]

CESA is an act of last resort, always has been, always will be because sometimes the Shi* hits the fan and there is no options. So yes, it should be taught, but only as a last resort after all the things everyone else has been yelling about.

The same folks will continue to argue It will "never happen" because they practice all their skills etc. . Gosh, how perfect they must be. In the real world stuff does happen and CESA in diving is one way out.

You are, of course, correct CESA is "an act of last resort". Something that should be practiced.

The Shi- will always hit the fan. All the skills and drills are great. In the end you have to be able to rescue yourself. CESA is one method to do so. I've used it, many others have, just one more skill to help a diver stay safe.