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I was recently trying to find info on the accident at Paradise Springs and couldn't find it anywhere on the web. I've run into this problem several times and could only find the info I wanted by asking other dive buddies and friends if they had the info I was looking for. Sometimes I can find what I'm looking for, sometimes I can't. Is there such an accessible, searchable database somewhere? I have yet to be pointed to one. Do divers want this, do you want access to such info? It's very frustrating that, in this era of instant communication, worldwide web databases available to anyone at any time to look up the most minute and inconsequential info, that a subject as important to everyday cave and tech divers as dive accident information is not readily available in a searchable form that would allow divers to examine their own techniques in the light of what works and what has clearly not worked. I complained about this on the lists about 15 months ago, discussing why it was that the Accident Analysis files that I knew were being kept by the CDS and NACD cooperatively with the IUCRR were not readily available. The reply that eventually I got back was that it was a lot of work and that the database "keeper" was busy doing his statistical reports, which are quite good, BTW, but that the raw reports could not be disbursed to the public at large because they contained personal info. I asked why we couldn't rewrite the reports in the Accident Analysis style that Exley used in his Basic Cave Diving book. The feedback I got was somewhat defensive, "You want it done, well why don't YOU do it!" (paraphrasing). So I did. I agreed to rewrite the reports. Then stunned silence. It took a while, but after keeping on them about it, the agency that controls these reports agreed, after what was apparently some contention about letting me have access to them by the Board, to let me work with the "Keeper" in rewriting the reports and making them available in some forum which was not at the time clearly specified, but that was at least progress. But I had to jump through some hoops and take a course. I did. Then they wanted me to help the "Keeper" out with a couple of his projects finding info on some recent dive accidents. I did that. All the while I'm asking for reports to work on. None ever came. One person sent me some of the reports he had on his hard drive as a friendly gesture, but it was just that, a gesture, this was not access to the database that was necessary to do the job. After over a year of asking, pleading, emailing & calling, no reports from the database were ever offered up. There was also some grousing about liability etc. Nice enough folks, but no follow-through, no fulfillment of their promise to allow this to go forward. After agreeing to allow me to do this work, they silently reneged. A couple of months ago, after a year of inaction, I wrote the director and resigned, saying in my email, that I am still willing to work on the files whenever and wherever they will allow me to. Why does this info have to be so closely held, so private and sacrosanct that only the very few, the "in-crowd" of this agency ever gets to see it? Sure, since I made the request in March of 2000 they have published, dribbled out a few reports online, but why the secrecy overall? Why can't cave & tech divers, those people with the biggest stake in such information, see these files, read these reports? If the reports are cleansed of all personal info and reduced to their basic facts, wouldn't they be useful in training and for study by already-trained cave divers? When I got trained in 1990 the book that had the biggest impact on me was Exley's Basic Cave Diving. The reports in that book had the desired effect. They made me examine how I was learning and the techniques I was using when cave diving. I believe that those reports made me a better, safer cave diver. Might this info not save lives if made readily available? Why the secrecy? What would they lose if it became available? JoeL -- Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'. Send subscribe/unsubscribe requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'.
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