Dominican Republic a little safer, now was cueva taina

[Neptuno]

Well, last saturday thanks to phill and the land owners of Cueva Taina in the city of Santo Domingo, we installed the 2 Stop signs needed there in the 2 sections of the cave, the landowners showed a very special interest in safety and we are working together with them on the rules and the liability releases for them to ask the instructors to sign and enforce the no open waters beyond the cavern limit rule.

Personally I think that was a very, very important step, this cave is very visited in clases and tours, is about 10 mins from las Americas airport and about 20 mins from downtown Santo Domingo, is the most famous cave in the Dominican Republic.

I posted some small pics in the news page here http://dr-ss.wikispaces.com/DRSS+News soon we will post them in the gallery on the main www.dr-ss.com website.

the DRSS is claiming up

[Neptuno]

for the records we instaled the signs inside other 3 very visited caves in Bayahibe earlier this year, there was only 1 sign in the whole country before, now this make it to 5 signs installed by the DRSS on the most important caves in the Dominican Rep.

some more to come, hopefully this will help to prevent accidents to happen

[Greenwood_60]

Well done!

[FW]

Good job guys!

[metaldector]

Are the signs our standard English signs or are they in Spanish or bi-lingual? Just curious.

[Greenwood_60]

pics in the link are bilingual

[Neptuno]

yes, bilingual http://www.dr-ss.com/drss/media/lib/...rning-sign.gif

and by the way are not the standard ones, but a lot nicer ones

[b1gcountry]

Just my personal addition to this note, a friend of mine adopted a kid from the DR. He tries to go back there with her every year or two, so she gets to know where she was born. Anyway, he did one of these dives. He'd been to Akumal, and dove the Cenotes before. He didn't know what he was getting into. Said the climb down into the cavern was pretty sketchy. He also wasn't aware of how far in they were going to go, and once they got a little bit in, he said he didn't really think he could find his way back out, and said he would have turned around if he knew for sure he'd find his way out on his own. All in all, he wasn't very happy, but also wasn't at all aware what he was getting into.

Tom

[phillip1]

I had not been in Taina for a while and when we installed the sign in B tunnel (deeper side) I realized once again how dangerous this cave was with OW divers etc.. I still cannot believe that the dive shops were taking OW clients way past were we put the sign, it is totally insane!!!! it is really really lucky that nothing has ever happened there, thank god.

I also want to thank the landowners for helping us out and for really wanting to make the cave a safer place.
Hopefully this will help prevent an accident

[Neptuno]

Just my personal addition to this note, a friend of mine adopted a kid from the DR. He tries to go back there with her every year or two, so she gets to know where she was born. Anyway, he did one of these dives. He'd been to Akumal, and dove the Cenotes before. He didn't know what he was getting into. Said the climb down into the cavern was pretty sketchy. He also wasn't aware of how far in they were going to go, and once they got a little bit in, he said he didn't really think he could find his way back out, and said he would have turned around if he knew for sure he'd find his way out on his own. All in all, he wasn't very happy, but also wasn't at all aware what he was getting into.

Tom

I bet most cases are like that, lucky they are that nobody got into panic and swam away to the unknown