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Andy, Come on now Andy, how would you characterize Rob Palmer's accidental death if you knew that he was routinely making 100 meter air dives with a local Egyptian deep air diving maven? Would you call him a d*** f*** for doing this before the fact or only after he got killed? Do you think that performing Wah Wah dives off the seaward side of a 7000 foot wall is a smart or responsible thing to do? Do you ever consider that when you risk your life doing something blatantly stupid that maybe your foolishness affects the lives of people other than yourself? Like when the life insurance will not pay when there is no body and what about the grief of relatives who have to deal with the aftermath and permanent scars left over from the tragedy. Andy, what about these three people who are still missing, and presumed dead, off of Palm Beach? Do you think that drift diving in 250fsw with heavy steel doubles and dual steel stages and a student with minimal deep diving experience is real smart, especially when it turns out that the survivor "an experienced diver" surfaced from a 20 minute bottom time dive with no back gas left? How would you characterize this escapade? In my opinion, having observed such activities for many years, this was a Charlie Foxtrot waiting to happen and I would have described it in these terms before the fact. Andy, do you think that deep diving with a known health problem such as asthma is a smart thing to do? Do you think that overweight people, who probably have high blood pressure and poor circulation in adipose tissues should do decompression diving? Do you think that people with health problems. which are subject to pharmacological intervention, should be performing socalled "technical" dives? Many of these people would still be alive if someone had got in their face and read them the riot act before they enjoined themselves, their friends and others in a tragedy. Now that these people are dead at least everyone else can learn from the loss. If we tiptoe around the problem whispering bromides and niceties to each other, then the message is generally lost or diluted. The wake of deaths over the past year from such things as "deep air" and stupidity is shocking and will likely result in the loss of insurance for all technical diving. We see, every time we dive here in South Florida, some egregious new violation of sensible diving practice and we are remiss for not getting in these peoples face in nasty and insulting way, if this is necessary. Too many times I have observed people reverting to known dangerous practices when the admonition is the "you know you really should change that" softsoap. Your seemingly thin skinned "polite society" approach simply does not work. Sorry. BTW your hypothetical tragedy, while amusing, is improbable. A morbidly obese individual with a severe respiratory disease, diving deep on air, in a cave with horrifying gear is either mentally deranged or suicidal, although in North Florida some would say that this is a typical profile. Would you be an affirmative action instructor and encourage such a person to pursue diving or would you get in their fat face before the fact and maybe save their life? Regards, Bill Andy Schmidt wrote: > > Michael: > > >> that's like saying that most air crashes involve some sort of pilot > error. But you just cannot stop there, but need to analyze the nature of the > error. << > > Agreed, compare the following two reports on a HYPOTHETICAL incident. > Hopefully it demonstrates why I prefer one version over the other. > > Version A > > A 37 year old diver from Massachusetts drowned at Balucci Springs, FL on > February 31, 1998. The victim had been diving with 2 companions. It was > their first dive for this weekend. All three divers were Full Cave > certified, carried 3 lights per diver and were diving normoxic air. The > divers reached the "Room of Pearls" where they called their dive on thirds. > Maximum depth recorded was 157 feet, the diver reportedly went without > incident. After 25 minutes dive time they started their decompression at 20 > feet on 100% oxygen just outside the cave entrance. Several minutes into > decompression, the victim signaled trouble to his companions, moments later > his body went limb, the regulator fell out of his mouth and the body was > sinking to the bottom of the spring. > His dive companions surfaced the body and alerted bystanders who immediately > started CPR without ever reviving the victim. > The county coroner ruled this an accidental death. Results of a standard > drug test suggest the use of a controlled substance 12 to 24 hours prior to > the dive. In addition an inhalator was found in his personal gear. > > Version B (by the time the Tech-Diver list gets the news...) > > Another Deep Air diver bought the dust. Peter Peterson, some overweight > asthmatic dumb fuck from New England, committed the maximum strokery of all > times. Believe me, I saw the gear - bondage wings, stuffed hoses, Aluminum > cylinders. The fat slob properly got himself stressed out just trying to > push his deformed soon-to-be corps through the water. No wonder he was ready > to just pass before he could ever make it to the surface. He didn't deserve > any better! Of course, his pot-smoking buddies were breathing off the short > hose and couldn't even get a working regulator to him on time. Instead they > abandoned the guy on shore and went back to complete their weenie > decompression. But at least they carried certification cards from no-good > red-neck instructor Mike Mickelson. > > >> most deaths are cuased by diver error, you HAVE to blame the dead diver > for doing something wrong. << > > I disagree - blame won't bring him back. Why not just REPORT what he did, > including all the things that he did wrong? Michael, all I'm asking is, that > we start reporting accidents in a fashion that doesn't cause families > unnecessary distress. Version A has all the facts, we ALL can see what > happened. I bet you, the family would even cooperate with fact collection. > There is no need to "dramatize" the facts and write up Version B just so > that we all "get the message". Did you ask for a baby-sitter? I didn't! If > anything, Version B will scare future witnesses or participants away from > EVER providing ANY information about future incidents - and then we wonder > why people stop reporting (which started this whole discussion). > > >> So what really happened in the Red Sea? Deep Air diving? Explaining this > one with a heart attack (impossible to prove)? Or a freak equipment failure > (impossible to prove)? How come he could not deal with that failure? Isn't > that a valid question? << > > The management of the Red Sea incident was pathetic. The first > "announcement" reported one witness seeing the diver starting an immediate, > unexplainable descent, but then the victim supposedly gave a signal. WHAT > signal? Help? Trouble? Okay? All the questions you raise are VALID - I never > said that I had a problem with people looking for ANSWERS! But that's a far > cry from calling the dead diver names, or for non-witnesses to presenting > speculation or "best guesses" as if they were established FACTS. > > Best Regards, > Andy > > -- > Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'. > Send subscribe/unsubscribe requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'. -- Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'. Send subscribe/unsubscribe requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'.
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