2 Dead, 2 Injured in German lake

[Diver0001]

I won't translate it literally but the following is the gist of the article on the Dutch website:

Basically it says that a group of divers, including the divers who had the accident, were making a deep dive in 3 buddy teams. The location was a quarry of sorts and the conditions were good.

The way it sounds some (unclear if all) of the divers incurred a decompression obligation and had to make stops on the way to the surface.

During one of the stops a diver from (we will call it team-A... whose name is Bart) was approached by a diver from Team-B who was OOA. His name was Fred.

Bart shared air with Fred (the OOA diver)and at this point they had sufficient air left to finish all the stops with both divers breathing out of the same tank.

During the air sharing they were unable to maintain buoyancy control and started sinking, evidently as a result of the OOA diver being unable to add air to his BCD. They sank (it sounds like) all of the way to the bottom where Bart (the diver donating air) could see the buddy of Fred laying on the bottom, apparently lifeless. They tried to jettison the weights of the OOA diver, Fred, but were unable.

At that point Bart, who had been trying to compensate for the sinking by inflating his own BCD and suit, and Fred lost contact with each other and became separated. Bart was "launched" to the surface and suffered a DCS injury.

Fred died.

As an aside, I read in a different source that the tanks of both deceased divers were empty.

R..

 

[nakatomi]

According to a diver who was in contact with two of the rescue divers and reported some findings on the German forum taucher.net, one of the victims had an empty tank, while the other tank still contained 65bar (940psi). Plus they both wore wetsuits (semidries).

The Dutch report itself makes little sense at all, at least not to me.

Almost everything that could go wrong during the OOA situation apparently did go wrong. But there is no explanation why. How can one diver be so negatively buoyant that he can pull down another diver who is inflating both his BCD _and_ drysuit? I cannot see how this could be possible unless they were both heavily overweighted.

But that´s only part two of the accident. Part one, more or less a separate accident, and the events leading up to the OOA situation which left one diver dead, are completely unexplained.

Are there any other factors that might have contributed to the accident(s)?

Hm, let´s see...

1. 50 meters on air (possibly even a decompression dive)...
2. At 5 degrees celsius...
3. Using a single tank of 12 liters...
4. And all of this in a wetsuit..
5. In almost complete darkness with (contrary to the report) not so fantastic visibility last weekend.

That´s 5 factors in all which (in my opinion) do not work in this combination.

N.

 

[Diver0001]

According to a diver who was in contact with two of the rescue divers and reported some findings on the German forum taucher.net, one of the victims had an empty tank, while the other tank still contained 65bar (940psi). Plus they both wore wetsuits (semidries).

The Dutch article doesn't make any mention of the gear the deceased divers were using. It does mention that the diver donating air tried to inflate his suit, which I assume means that diver, at least, was using a drysuit.

Also, I haven't seen any confirmation of the depth at which the dive took place, only the depth at which the diver's bodies were found. I'm not familiar with the site so if someone could post a site-map and the location where the bodies were found it would help. If the dive took place along a wall, for example, it's conceivable to me that the bodies could have been recovered at a different depth than the dive took place. Everyone seems to be assuming that since the bodies were at 50m that the dive took place at this depth.

How can one diver be so negatively buoyant that he can pull down another diver who is inflating both his BCD _and_ drysuit? I cannot see how this could be possible unless they were both heavily overweighted.

It seems odd to me that this would have happened to two experienced divers as well but we have no reason to doubt that it happened. The question in my mind as well is, "how".

1. 50 meters on air (possibly even a decompression dive)...

once again, I don't know if it's safe to conclude that the actual dive took place at this depth.

2. At 5 degrees celsius...

This, I assume would be the bottom temperature. Once again, it's unclear to me if they could conceivably have been diving shallower.

3. Using a single tank of 12 liters...
4. And all of this in a wetsuit..

This much seems to be confirmed, but depending, once again, at the depth at which the actual dive took place, this gear is common and may not have been a mismatch for the plan. We don't have any information about what they actually planned on doing.

5. In almost complete darkness with (contrary to the report) not so fantastic visibility last weekend.

Compared to where these divers are accustomed to diving, I don't believe that visibility could have played a major role.


R..

 

[Diver0001]

ok a bit more info. According to someone on the Dutch forums who saw where the bodies were taken out of the water, they were about 40m east of the "E5" entrance. That's a wall dive with a bottom at 50m but the wall is steep. This leads me to believe that we cannot, in fact, assume that the divers were actually diving at 50m even though that's the depth at which the bodies were found, since the wall extends all the way to the surface.


R..

 

[japan-diver]

From the details we do know a poorly planned and executed dive. Running out of air, not being able to deal with a simple air share- sounds alot like improper weighting. These are the type of accidents that should not be happening.

 

[nakatomi]

Indeed the exact depth and profile of the dive have not been confirmed, only that they planned and carried out a "deep dive".

And yes, 5 degrees would have been the temperature at 50 meters. But then even at 30 meters it is only a 2-3 of degrees more.

Let´s all hope we receive better information and can all learn from this tragic incident.

 

[Lemna]

The way it sounds some (unclear if all) of the divers incurred a decompression obligation and had to make stops on the way to the surface.

From the Dutch website it seems that deco stops were planned. They talk about the "first stop".

Bart shared air with Fred (the OOA diver) but they were aware that they now had insufficient air left to finish all the stops with both divers breathing out of the same tank.

This is not correct, they actually report the opposite. They state that "Bart had sufficient air left for a safe ascent for both divers" ('Bart had op dat moment voldoende lucht om samen een veilige opstijging te maken').

 

[Diver0001]

From the details we do know a poorly planned and executed dive. Running out of air, not being able to deal with a simple air share- sounds alot like improper weighting. These are the type of accidents that should not be happening.

Again you're making a bunch of assumptions.

You say that the dive was poorly planned but we have absolutely ZERO information about the plan. Without any reason to think otherwise it's entirely conceivable that the plan was fine but that something happened during the dive that took them off the plan.

What clearly seems to have happened is that one diver died before the diver who was OOA ascended. Why he died is unclear. Since rescuers found air in one of the tanks and we know that the diver who ascended was OOA then we can conclude that the diver who was first to die still had air. Perhaps something other than "poor planning" or whatever, contributed. Is it possible that he had a medical issue that precipitated the entire event? We don't know and we won't know until an autopsy is done (if indeed one is even planned).

Secondly, I don't think we can conclude directly that the buoyancy trouble came from being "unable" to handle the air share. One of the things suggested on another diving forum is the possibility that the donor mistook the "sinking" of the OOA diver as accidental when it was in fact a deliberate attempt to drag the other diver down to help the buddy who he knew was on the bottom. In fact, I find that even a little easier to understand than the possibility that two experienced divers, at least one of whom was an instructor with experience and several credentials, couldn't handle a simple air share.

The C.F. that happened on the bottom with the weights is obviously hard to understand.

I don't want to speculate on what happened but the more I look at the actual facts here the more I'm starting to wonder if the dive team that got in trouble didn't have a medical issue which caused one diver to die and the other to run through his air trying to save him before he went for help. This is just a theory and I don't want it to sound like speculation but it does fit the facts.

R..

 

[Lemna]

Has there been any CO testing of the tanks? (Although there's no mention of sickness in the story)

The public prosecutor ruled that this was an accident caused by a mechanical defect or overconfidence. No third party (such as the person filling their tanks) is implicated in their deaths.

Source: NDR.

 

[Diver0001]

This is not correct, they actually report the opposite. They state that "Bart had sufficient air left for a safe ascent for both divers" ('Bart had op dat moment voldoende lucht om samen een veilige opstijging te maken').

You're right. I misread "voldoende" for "onvoldoende". I changed my original translation to match.

R..