Kevin,

I'm not sure where you got those statistics so let's be clear on a 
couple of things.

We have only done 20 dives in Wakulla over the past few years. We 
have never had a fatality there.

Three members of the WKPP perished, however none since 1992. The 
previous three are as follows:

Bill McFadden, 1987, deep air at Little Dismal, this was the incident 
which made the WKPP re-evaluate, and drop the use of, deep air.

Parker Turner, 1991, collapse at Indian Springs, this is probably the 
only cave diving fatality due to a collapse ever.

Sherwood Schille, 1992, Cheryl Sink, out of gas in a stage bottle, 
confusion in switching to another regulator.

We have not had another fatality since that time, and with the 
exception of only about a half dozen people or so the membership of 
the team is completely different from back then.

As for the "fourth member" that perished, I believe you're speaking
about the late Sheck Exley who died on an attempt at 1000' in Mexico.
This was not a WKPP dive, and I think that story speaks for itself.

Under the current leadership our safety record has been unmatched by 
any other exploration project. We learned from each fatality and 
changed our protocols so it won't happen again. Unlike the leadership 
of certain training agencies, which refuse to change their training 
protocols even after an excessive amount of fatalities tied in with 
their organization within even the past 12 months.

Nice attempt at a troll, now go back to rec.scuba,

Ken Sallot

> From:          Scaleworks <Scaleworks@ao*.co*>
> Date:          Tue, 10 Mar 1998 09:07:46 EST
> To:            cavers@ww*.ge*.co*, techdiver@aquanaut.com
> Subject:       Re: incident statistics

> A question on statistics.
> 
> Just finished reading the history of the WKPP on their site, and was very
> surprised to find that since 1993 they have had less than 20 dives there,
> albeit very impressive dives technically and logistically, but in those 20
> dives, there have been 2 deaths.
> They also list a total of 4 members that have perished while diving. 
> This over 5% membership death rate, and over a 10% mortality rate per dive at
> Wakulla.
>  I was under the impression that the group was incident free. Are there
> mitigating circumstances that the deaths are not included in the overall
> picture?
> 
> This is not an attack on the WKPP's commitment to safety, dedication to the
> sport, or equipment , I understand that these are high risk, on the edge
> dives, with a high degree of potential danger. Just wondering how incidents
> are factored in to information released to the public by groups such as the
> WKPP, DAN, etc. Is there a standard in the industry for accident analysis?
> Maybe a question for their public relations  and safety director to answer.
> 
> Kevin
> Skippy the punk Gannon :)
> 
--
Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'.
Send subscribe/unsubscribe requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'.

Navigate by Author: [Previous] [Next] [Author Search Index]
Navigate by Subject: [Previous] [Next] [Subject Search Index]

[Send Reply] [Send Message with New Topic]

[Search Selection] [Mailing List Home] [Home]