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Date: Sun, 19 Jul 1998 07:24:24 -0400
From: "Katherine V. Irvine" <kirvine@sa*.ne*>
Organization: DIR
To: Dave Dalton <dmdalton@ju*.co*>
CC: cavers@ca*.co*, techdiver@aquanaut.com, JDA000@ao*.co*
Subject: Re: PA Quarry Near Drowning - Deep Air the culprit???
Dave, good report. Thanks. While it will be good to get the full gear
and gas report, my guess is the same as yours. The march towards
extinction of our sport continues, led by the strokes. We need to expose
these guys as the morons that they are, and get them out of the game by
any means possible. I would suggest forwarding all accident reports to
the insurance copmpanies who are convering the agencies that teach this
kind of stupidity. The wallet is the best way of getting the atention of
hard headed idiots, like the ones I am always arguing with on here. No
money slows the mouth down. It will be a while before the lawsuits that
are stacked up against these guys come to fruition and finish them off ,
but in the meantime the accidents are skyrocketing due to the abject
stupidity of what is being taught out there. 

Bill Mee had an interesting observation about the training agencies and
their respective bad influences: they are like the T-1000 "Terminator"
in the Schartzenegger movie : you blow them away and all of the little
pieces come after you. This is what we are seing in dive training. The
instructors get trained in mindless stupidity, and then the "
standards" enforce the stupidity, and the mulitplication and spread of
the stupidity is mindboggling. 

 Look at the track record of these idiots - they do nothing, they have
never done anything, they contribute nothing but death , destruction,
stupidity, misinformation, and accidents to our sport. If I have to do
one more dive to get bodies for one of these assholes, I am going to
phone the insurance companies myself and have a long talk with them. I
refused to do one yesterday, and I am sick of doing only two dives :
Wakulla and body recovery. Time to get really to the point with the
training agencies. This has to stop NOW.



Dave Dalton wrote:
> 
> While doing some diving with my son today at the Bainbridge Sportsman
> Club, a quarry located 100 miles west of Philadelphia, we responded to a
> call for help from the safety boat regarding a diver lost in 120 FFW.
> 
> When we arrived at the boat we were informed that a diver was lost in 120
> FFW, the deepest point in the quarry and two divers were down searching
> for him. They asked for  two relief divers if the first two didn't find
> him. I volunteered and asked to borrow hood and gloves from another diver
> since I wasn't any wearing (my son and I were diving shallow where the
> water was warm) and the temperature at 120 in the quarry is approximately
> 40 degrees (F).   At this point the diver had been separated from his
> buddy for in excess of 5 minutes.
> 
>  The diver's buddy, advised that he had looked over at his buddy, Russ
> (LNU) at 120 ffw and "his eyes were as big as softballs and he was not
> breathing." The buddy said he looked for a weight belt to drop but the
> Russ was wearing twin 95's with a drysuit and didn't have a weight belt
> (Russ was wearing a canister light which could have been dropped). When
> asked if he tried to inflate Russ's bc or his drysuit, he responded that
> "Russ had gear all over  himself covering things up and I could't find
> the inflators."
> 
> At this point the two rescue divers were seen ascending with the lost
> diver in tow, minus his gear. He broke the surface face down and another
> diver and I turned him over.  He was not breathing and  his face was
> cyanotic. His masked was removed as a prelude to in-water mouth-to-mouth.
> At this point he coughed and spit up blood and began breathing on his
> own. My son and another diver towed him to the boat where he was placed
> in a body basket and lifted from the water. The boat operator had already
> radioed for the EMTs and the boat transported him to shore where the
> rescue units were waiting.
> 
> The two rescue divers advised that he was found motionless without his
> gear in 95 ffw. Apparently he had ditched his gear to become buoyant in
> an effort to get off the bottom.
> 
> The diver's gear had not yet been retrieved when we left so I don't know
> either the configuration, PSI still remaining or what equipment was or
> wasn't working.
> 
> The diver was said to be Technical Nitrox certified and working on
> Tri-mix rating. Don't know how many dives he has made or how long he has
> been diving.
> 
> It would appear that due to the depth on air compounded by the
> temperature, the diver  was heavily affected by narcosis.
> 
> It would appear that the divers buddy was also affected by narcosis owing
> to the fact that his response in the emergency was substandard; unable to
> inflate his buddy's bc or drysuit, didn't think to grab hold of his
> buddy's gear and infate his own bc and tow the impaired diver to the
> surface, and leaving his buddy in an impaired state at 120 ffw.
> 
> HATS OFF TO THE TWO RESCUE DIVERS WHO FOUND HIM AND BROUGHT HIM UP.  RUSS
> OWES YOU BIG TIME!!!!!!!!!!
> 
> Great job by the Bainbridge Sportsman's Club safety boat operators. You
> have a great operation.  I'll be back.
> 
> _____________________________________________________________________
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