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on 3/22/00 4:33 AM, Hypohippo@ao*.co* at Hypohippo@ao*.co* wrote: > As far as your assuming that I meant being killed in a cave is inevitable for > all cave divers is completely off base. What I said was that "as long as > people continue to dive in caves their will be deaths. That is a simple fact > of the sport. I have been diving caves for many years and I am well aware > that even the most safe and sophisticated cave divers do perish in caves no > matter how well they are trained or how experienced they are. The same is > true for mountain climbers. As long as people take baths there will be deaths. As long as people walk on sidewalks there will be deaths. I saw a statistic that something like 15 people died in lakes in the West (I think it was California) in one year trying to retrieve their hat that had fallen out of a boat. When I started cave diving in 1990 and for some time after, in fact for eight years there were no deaths of trained and certified cave divers in the United States. Training, maturity and experience will keep divers alive in caves. There is no reason for divers to die in caves, it's not inevitable. I also whitewater kayak and I know that kayaking is more unpredictable and, in my opinion, more dangerous than cave diving. Cave diving has very controllable risks, kayaking does as well, but there is a much larger uncertainty factor, like undercut rocks, unpredictable currents, unseen holes, changing conditions due to water height and bottom changes. Even changes in light can be deceiving and ultimately deadly to the advanced whitewater kayaker--but even these risks are controllable up to a point. A well-trained cave diver who is careful, who takes care in the selection of his dive partners and his profile and who dives the right gas and who dives within safe parameters is very unlikely to die in a cave. There are some changing conditions, like vis, but even this is just part of the planning. No caver should take comfort in a death in a cave, but every time a diver dies in a cave and I learn the trail of cause and effect, the Accident Analysis, and I learn that it points to something like bad planning, poor equipment or diving beyond one's training, I AM glad. I'm happy because I can then take a fresh look at myself and say, "Nope, don't do 'personal best' dives after a long layoff. And nope, I didn't start scootering before I was fully trained or use stages. Nope, I don't trash the cave. Nope I don't do big dives AT ALL after a long layoff. That's why AA is so important and why it's imperative that SOMEONE start to take responsibility for doing this research and publicly and loudly report those findings to the lists, the newsletters, web pages and in training manuals. Every web page related to cave diving ought to have, on it's first page, a link to recent accidents and an archive of accidents going back to as long as that diver's been diving caves. It's time to pull our collective heads out of the sand . . . or elsewhere, and get in the game. Safety isn't a sidebar, it's the whole show. A strong focus on safety made cave diving. This lack of focus--and maybe an overabundance of well-mannered apathy--will kill it. Later, JoeL
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