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on 6/6/00 5:04 PM, Dell Motes at dell@di*.co* wrote: > Who exactly would you like to do the AA on these past accidents??? > The IUCRR was only recently formed. You referred to this organization as if > it was suddenly responsible for compiling and distributing all this past > info, when it is still in it's infancy in organization and scope. > Are you offering your services to do an accurate assessment and publish your > findings on all these accidents ? > The "clique' comments are a waste of time, as I am neither a member of the > CDS, NACD, GUE, IANTD or any others. > As far as excluding GUE, I believe that Jarrod, Ted and a few others are on > the Recovery list. If not, I'm sure they will correct me. They have also > done recoveries. > Why do people constantly attempt to drive a wedge between GUE and everybody > else ??? > Jarrod knows I support and admire his work and drive to do something he > truly believes in. I have had more than one conversation > with him concerning various issues, and they have all been very positive and > enlightening. > It seems the favorite catalyst is to cry foul, and label something > "political" or "cliquish" when it usually comes down to someones valuable > time and volunteer work. > Joel, if you know someone who can compile this info and evaluate it to your > liking and speed, please make the effort to put them in contact with Henry. Dell, I have. I already volunteered to do it and to produce reports for the IUCRR that would routinely make this info available. The IUCRR Board declined politely saying that they preferred to make the Secretary and Treasurer positions one and the same. Annette is the current Secretary and Treasurer. She may have something similar in mind, I don't know. > Why do people constantly attempt to drive a wedge between GUE and everybody > else ??? This "us against them" mentality is pervasive in cave diving and is as useless as it is pointless. How you extrapolate that I'm trying to "drive a wedge" between GUE and anyone is beyond me. You may have some axes there to grind--I don't. > Who exactly would you like to do the AA on these past accidents??? Past. You mean past as in today and back? OK. This is what I'd like to have done with ALL reports, past, present and future: Past Reports: All past reports should be collected and collated and those not subjected to AA-style analysis should be and the resulting reports then published on the IUCRR website which should be a searchable database. A time should be set for such analysis based on the number of reports that are incomplete. Once the archivist has had time to review them, he should make a report to the IUCRR Board and to the Recovery Diver's list for comment. Once comments are received, the archivist should report on a time for review and publication--certainly within 6 months, probably less. Present and Future Reports: All reports going forward should be handled like this: Once the accident's facts have been collected (say, like the OW diver who died in Little River recently), those facts should be delivered to the IUCRR person responsible for analyzing and collating them immediately. That person should write a preliminary report within 14-30 days that should then be disseminated to the Recovery Divers List for comment. Within the next 14-30 days all comments should be put into a follow-up report and the IUCRR Board should then meet (via conference call or online in a conference "room"--or in person) to make a final accident report using the tenets of Accident Analysis, updated to take into account the current realities of cave and technical diving. That report should then be published on the IUCRR website, in all cave organization newsletters and posted to cave/tech specific lists such as Techdiver and Cavers. If the IUCRR so desires they could easily create a simple text-based newsletter which could be subscribed to for a $5-10 yearly contribution and published via a PDF or Acrobat file that could be downloaded from the IUCRR website bimonthly or quarterly. Non-computer persons can have it printed out and faxed or mailed to them. I had volunteered to do this archival work in my outline of duties to Henry, but never got permission to gain access to the accident files before Annette took over. I still am willing to do this work. I think that it is critical that this information be put into the hands of cave divers everywhere and not left sitting in a filing cabinet in some guy's basement, untouched and unread. Those facts, these blueprints for survival could save some diver's life and if that is true, then the converse must certainly be true--that their absence, their lack of accessibility could also contribute to some diver's death who might otherwise have adjusted his/her dive plan based on the information contained therein. Robert Laird and I put together the CDS member's manual database that I collated, updated and then turned over to him for web-publishing. The same could be done here--regardless of who does it. Robert is no longer Webmaster for the NSS-CDS, having recently resigned. He could easily do the web part of this as the IUCRR webmaster. Let's go! Why is this information being held secret? > The IUCRR was only recently formed. You referred to this organization as if > it was suddenly responsible for compiling and distributing all this past > info, when it is still in it's infancy in organization and scope. Not true, not by a long shot--and I'm surprised you don't know this. The NCRC (National Cave Rescue Commission) was commissioned in 1982 in the CDS and later a similar organization was created by the NACD. The IUCRR was created about a year ago. This is from the CDS webpage: >In January 1999, the Board of Directors for the NSS-CDS and the NACD >elected to remove the Rescue and Recovery Team from one particular >cave diving organization and allow it to be established as a >independent program to be sponsored by the NSS-CDS, the NACD, and >other cave diving agencies. The intent of this move was to eliminate >duplication and create harmony between the cave diving agencies. So, as you can see, those files and this organization, as I indicated in my other message, have been around a long time. Long enough, certainly, to make this information more available to cave divers. It's time. I commend Henry and his long devotion to this work. I've met him, he's a good guy and his intent is good. And I commend all the volunteers around the world for their work, but having said all of that I have to say again--as I've said over and over for the last several years--there MUST be a more effective and timely method for disseminating this important information to divers. THEY are the ones who actually OWN this data, not the IUCRR, not the CDS and not just you or I. For every cave diver who dies in a cave, the IUCRR Board has to look at itself and wonder, "Could this have been prevented with more information?" And that is the real problem here. It's time. I'm apolitical when it comes to cave diving. I admire much of what the WKPP does. I think the GUE training is too expensive, but otherwise excellent. I think the CDS needs a serious enema, although there are people on the board who have struggled long and hard to bring some sense to it. I have a 1990 NACD cave card, but I don't know that much about the NACD. But most of all I think the average cave diver just wants to dive and where possible, to contribute to the overall safety and community of cave divers. The petty politics and long-held hatreds, the cliques, the "us-against-them" BS has put cave diving into near decade-long cesspool from which it will take years to recover. The enmity and BS on this list doesn't help and has contributed to the paranoia to the point where one group won't and can't work with another. Self-important "leaders" have contributed to this atmosphere. We need "unimportant" volunteers to make the changes. My worry is that the IUCRR will end up as just another politically-driven organization, when some of the purpose of a separate charter was to avoid politics and to find a way for this group to be accessible and responsible to cave divers at large--at least that is my take. The offer still stands. Later, JoeL PS--I looked, there's one accident report in the last UWS issue. Where did you see others? I ask again, how many accidents have there been in the last 5 years? How many resulted in a published report? Who holds that information? -- Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'. Send subscribe/unsubscribe requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'.
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