Accident at Mx

[Dave Bell]

There are indeed people here that know what happened. I have seen the chat in the aftermath of accidents before, and there are times when I have known something, but I ask myself, why contribute? Does it really lead to any increased understanding or safety, or does it just contribute to the chaos of the internet? It has seemed to me that everyone uses the barest details of what is known to push his or her own agenda. If no details are involved, why not make some up?

If I have a detail, why would I throw it out for everyone to embellish?

So, if my agenda is that "my training is better than your training", I could launch into "Oh yeah some guys died, it's because their training was inadequate--mine is better and this could never happen to me" and go on to describe the "obvious" mistakes that the victims must have made in order to die, even though they don't have the slightist clue about what really happened.

I sure hope I never die in a cave and my widow has to be subject to reading all the critisism, finger pointing, speculation, and self serving crap that is put out. It is truly sickening to contemplate.

If people dont know what happened (and they dont) they should just not speculate until the facts are in, if they ever are.

I'm not really talking about this board. The moderators here shut things down before they get out of hand, and they should. I think it's because the moderators here have been involved with cave diving enough to know that all the finger pointing and wild speculation is totally inappropriate and leads down the wrong path--not the one that leads to understanding and knowledge.

Please don't contribute to the chaos by speculating. Maybe everyone will know what actually happened in this incident and maybe they won't. The fact remains that there are a couple of widows and some sad friends that need your support if you are able to give it.

I'm not really talking about this board. The moderators here shut things down before they get out of hand, and they should. I think it's because the moderators here have been involved with cave diving enough to know that all the finger pointing and wild speculation is totally inappropriate and leads down the wrong path--not the one that leads to understanding and knowledge.

I've stated this before on other boards, and I'll state it here:

"Ok.. if someone is taking notes...

For the record for me... speculate. Second Guess. Question. Accuse me of doing things I didn't do. Soil my good name. What do I care, I'm dead. Use my mistake to provoke thought and learn from what I did, or what you think I did, or what I might have done.... I'd rather be remembered and immortalized with learned lessons then to be forgotten as the lame-ass I was "

[resolute]

<snip>
Please don't contribute to the chaos by speculating. Maybe everyone will know what actually happened in this incident and maybe they won't. The fact remains that there are a couple of widows and some sad friends that need your support if you are able to give it.

I agree with the spirit of what you are saying here and while I personally have had (more than..) my share of writings on this matter, I hope that those tragically involved understand that it is only because we, like them, are looking for answers when answers are not that easy to find - so we all share that frustration to some extent.

We had two apparently very capable, well-trained and proficient cave divers not make it back. They each had made it back from numerous other cave dives without incident - but this one they didn't for whatever reason..

Like the family, friends and others directly impacted, we just hope to understand (if at all possible) what may have impacted these tragic results either directly or indirectly.

And believe me, I share the view that anyone who exploits a tragedy such as this to "push" any agenda is nothing more than cave slime.. There is an appropriate time and place to further one's agenda(s), but after a tragedy involving "one of our own" is certainly not that time.. Fact is, this type of event could happen to any one of us (no matter how foolproof you think your training and preparation is..), just like any one of us could be killed in a car wreck today.. and, although I would want anyone and everyone still left behind to learn anything they could from what I experienced, there are two ways to accomplish that objective - one involves class, dignity and respect for the deceased and their survivors, and one does not...

JB

[DeWayne]

You said what needed to be said quite well JB. 8)

As for folks learning from my own bad experiences, I wish that they would. Yet I continue to see the blue oval of death everywhere. Okay, not really pushing my own agenda with this as it is true. BTW, who was the spectre fellow?

[JohnTodd]

There are indeed people here that know what happened. I have seen the chat in the aftermath of accidents before, and there are times when I have known something, but I ask myself, why contribute? Does it really lead to any increased understanding or safety, or does it just contribute to the chaos of the internet? It has seemed to me that everyone uses the barest details of what is known to push his or her own agenda. If no details are involved, why not make some up?

If I have a detail, why would I throw it out for everyone to embellish?

So, if my agenda is that "my training is better than your training", I could launch into "Oh yeah some guys died, it's because their training was inadequate--mine is better and this could never happen to me" and go on to describe the "obvious" mistakes that the victims must have made in order to die, even though they don't have the slightist clue about what really happened.

I sure hope I never die in a cave and my widow has to be subject to reading all the critisism, finger pointing, speculation, and self serving crap that is put out. It is truly sickening to contemplate.

If people dont know what happened (and they dont) they should just not speculate until the facts are in, if they ever are.

I'm not really talking about this board. The moderators here shut things down before they get out of hand, and they should. I think it's because the moderators here have been involved with cave diving enough to know that all the finger pointing and wild speculation is totally inappropriate and leads down the wrong path--not the one that leads to understanding and knowledge.

Please don't contribute to the chaos by speculating. Maybe everyone will know what actually happened in this incident and maybe they won't. The fact remains that there are a couple of widows and some sad friends that need your support if you are able to give it.

Fair points, but some basic questions remain. Who really really was the guide, and why did they take 8 or 9 divers to a small, fragile system and plan a dive that appears to be a blind traverse.

JT

[MikeH]

For the record for me... speculate. Second Guess. Question. Accuse me of doing things I didn't do. Soil my good name. What do I care, I'm dead. Use my mistake to provoke thought and learn from what I did, or what you think I did, or what I might have done.... I'd rather be remembered and immortalized with learned lessons then to be forgotten as the lame-ass I was "

Same here. If I die in a cave, I ###### up. Plain and simple. Learn from it. You owe me nothing other than that.

Don't worry about giving me a bad reputation...I can do that all by myself!

Mike

[BobK]

Please don't contribute to the chaos by speculating. Maybe everyone will know what actually happened in this incident and maybe they won't. The fact remains that there are a couple of widows and some sad friends that need your support if you are able to give it.

That's true, and it is a tragic incident for both the victims and the survivors. But, as a cave diver, I really really want to know what went wrong on that dive. The discussion I have read so far seems to be fair and raises some issues to think about. I don't think that's a bad thing. Speculation, by itself, is not an evil concept. Wild speculation, or speculation with an agenda, are what I think you dislike, and I agree with you. This forum seems to keep those to a minimum. But as you know, oftentimes the only way to try and figure out what happened on a bad dive is public speculation. The more data that is available, the less the speculation. But most divers want to end up with a cause and effect concept on dives like this. Diver A did something, Diver B did something, Diver A was OOG due to that something, or whatever. If we can't discuss it here, we are all going to do a small version of that on our own, without sharing our ideas, and end up with varying conclusions. At least if we speculate in public, there are others with lots of experience who can support or refute those ideas. That kind of discussion, even though speculative, will eventually lead to some supportable idea of the sequence of events for a given incident. Will it be the correct sequence ? We may never know. But it is likely to be closer than anything many of us would come up with on our own.

[JoeyP]

BobKwrote

....Speculation, by itself, is not an evil concept. Wild speculation, or speculation with an agenda, are what I think you dislike.....

I agree. Discussion is a tool by which we learn. People read these forums and share information and ideas. Even if the speculative thought is totally incorrect with respect to what happened it will still define potentially deadly scenarios which may serve to save someone from making that particular mistake. For example, in this instance, lets say that the size of the group, nine divers, had no impact on the accident. It is still not a good idea to put nine people in a cave and hopefully some who perhaps were not aware of that will think twice before joining a large group.

When the discussion is about something that really happened it takes on a much greater significance than the same discussion about a hypothetical situation and is IMO a more valuable learning tool.

[Mart]

I just came across the dis cussion about the Calimba accident.
I don't want to cotribute to the discussion about who was to blame, and who was the guide. I know who the guide was, and no one will ever know exactly what went wrong and why.
But I can understand why cave divers want to know as much as possible about any accident: this is a form of self preservation, call it personal accident analysis.
I did dive in this system quite often, last time around christmas, and have followed the same dive plan as this group several times. So for the ones who don't know the system or only have a vague recollection of it ("I don't remember any big jump on the way to Grand Cenote, but they changed all the lines last time"), here goes.
The system was explored from Cenote Ho Tul, and the original main line went from Ho Tul into al passage called Paso De Lagarto. Later this was changed, Grand Cenote became the main entrance and the main line now is from GC to Ho Tul, the Paso De Lagarto is now a jump. At this jump the arrows change, two pointing to Ho Tul, one back to Grand Cenote. The jump is a big one, I don't know why, but it is not difficult to find.
The Paso De Lagarto leads to Muchs Maze, a figure 8, but the main line passes through this without Ts, only jumps. You then enter the Paso De Los Dos Pozos.
Later Cenote Calimba and Cenote Bosh Chen were explored. It is important to understand the group of nine entered the system from this side, and because it was not originally explored from here the lines make less sense than they do from GC.
From what I heard the group entered the system from Cenote Calimba, in two groups (4 and 5). The main line ends with a snap n gap to the Paso de Los Dos Pozos (or you can take a jump to the right and also loop onto the Paso). They took a left there, and after a minute came to the (left again) jump to the Bosh Chen line. This line leads to the cenote and then loops back onto itself with a small jump. So if you put in the jump line on the way to the cenote you can do a small circuit, take out the line and go back to the Paso. This is what they probably did, as it is the nicest way to do this dive.
From Calimba to Bosh Chen takes less than thirds, so this not a "trust me" dive, maybe the little loop in the bosh Chen line, but this is done after the cenote, where you can recalculate, and once completed you are back on familiar ground.
Back at the jump to the Paso is where things went wrong, the group of four took a left instead of right, following the arrow pointing towards Grand Cenote and Ho Tul instead of the personal marker they probably put in on the way in. Now they followed this line through Muchs Maze, into the Paso De Lagarto. Somewhere during this swim they must have realized this was not the right tunnel: clear water (but there is not much percolation or silt here anyway), no ceiling bubbles, wrong markers (but all of them pointing in their direction) and different cave, the Paso De Lagarta is very different from the Calimba and Bosh Chen lines.
Maybe they decided with all arrows pointing out even if they were lost this was probably the best bet. Whatever they thought, after some time they came to the jump at the end of the Paso De Lagarto. The line ends with an arrow, so they must have known there is a jump there. From there the big jump (remember!) would have taken them to either Ho Tul, or Grand Cenote. Bosh Chen-Grand Cenote is possible on thirds, but only if you are good on air. But it is possible for any cave diver on the two thirds they must have had left at Bosh Chen. However, they did not find the Grand Cenote-Ho Tul line, which is a long jump, in a very large passage, so it is possible to swim in a wrong direction and miss this line.
After this they tuned around, retracing their steps into Muchs Maze and the Paso De Los Dos Pozos. I am not sure what happened, but they must have found the snap n gap to Calimba, as two of the four made it out, sharing air for the last part. The other two also shared air until the supply ran out. Thet were found a few 100 feet in from Calimba.
I hope this description will help some cave divers, not by speculating about who did what wrong, but by reconsidering their own diving habits. I know I did, thinking hard about how to manage such a dive safely, where to put in markers and how many, would I share lines with two groups etc.
And before anyone starts again about nine divers in Calimba, yes I totally agree you should not do this. I did it once with a team of three and for me this is the absolute maximum in this part of the cave. Recently we did the traverse from Grand Cenote to Cenote Pabilanny, this dive reminds you of how beuatiful Calimba was before.

safe diving, Mart

[JE]

nuno