Some Thoughts on Cave Diving Fatalities

[Gary]

It seems that one of the guys the test showed as susceptable toxed 6 more times out of 33 tests (18%) roughly 9 times as often as the identified average.

Poor guy.

[RN]

ok... what do you think it might have been? (like I said... I have no idea other than speculation).

I was told about the incident by someone who was at Ginnie that day and witnessed the topside events. Based on the information I heard, it sounds like it was medically related. In other words, what happened was going to happen whether he was diving or doing something else. I'd be interested in seeing the autopsy report. However, I'm not sure that they even looked beyond the embolism.

[jimmy herbert]

Where did the ox-tox info come from in the Jeff Thompson incident. I havn't seen that?

Nothing official, but but all indications seem to point in that direction. I was Jeff's buddy on all but 3 dives that week. If anyone wishes to start a separate thread on this incident, I'd be more than happy to provide info from my log, which should be nearly identical to Jeff's. I haven't gotten the opportunity to view his computer log or have an actual trace analysis of unused gas, but plan to do both.

[Kelly Jessop]

The problem is that we all DO speculate and make interpretations, but only speak of them quitely over beers at local restaurants after dives.

I have noticed an evolutionary change that has occured with regard to dive accident reporting. I am not saying this is good or bad, I'm just commenting.

A number of years ago, when an accident occured, there was speculation or a hypothesis that was generated rapidly, that would alert the cave diving community. This speculation/hypothesis saved some lives, ie bad air, and then sometimes was way off base, but it gave awareness to something we needed to attend to. Nowadays I notice that when an accident occurs there are immediate comments, not to speculate and wait until all the facts are in. Also, there is the PC component. At one time we used to discuss an accident to learn from it quickly to make sure the same thing isn't repeated, but often there are comments not to discuss it in respect to family and friends.

As I said, I am not condemning this, just making an observation, but basically I see that the process of assessing an accident in a rapid manner occurs; unfortunately this is done in tight circles and not publicly broadcast due to the reasons mentioned above.

[RN]

Nothing official, but but all indications seem to point in that direction. I was Jeff's buddy on all but 3 dives that week. If anyone wishes to start a separate thread on this incident, I'd be more than happy to provide info from my log, which should be nearly identical to Jeff's. I haven't gotten the opportunity to view his computer log or have an actual trace analysis of unused gas, but plan to do both.

I started a thread here. Thanks for the offer. We need more people like you who are willing to look back at things like this and get whatever good we can out of it.

[ARY]

...Any thoughts?...

Not to discuss any incident in particular. Rick, i made some outlines for myself based on accidents in our community this year (BTW this 07 seems like a terrible year for diving accidents worldwide). I think common in all these accidents w/trained divers is when something went too far off the balance curve.

- the more you dive the more chance that accident will happen to you. so when it gets too cool maybe it is a time to quit or at least to listen to the "little voice" and feed the paranoia bug
- small caves are as dangerous as high PP0s and deep ENDs. if our goal down there is to have fun why would we risk it. complex navigation, low viz and tight places can throw you off balance of the safe air reserve in an unpredictably fast escalation (consume more gas build CO2). basically rule of thirds never work in emergency, even in a solo mode, so why do we still commonly use it as a guideline?
- as some agencies teach max PPO 1.2 sounds like a safer limit to me than 1.4 especially when catalytic effect of CO2 buildup brings unpredictably fast escalation of the O2 tox. should we rather use 30% in our "disneyland" caves instead of common pre-banked 32% , and (sigh kiss your budget g-bye) dilue it w/some He?

[bullfrog]

I didn't see any thing in the first reports about siezures. I assumed MI. was there a siezure?