Am I reading this correctly. Chuuk Lagoon.

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tyesai

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Did his fiancee die and he keep diving on holiday?

CDNN :: Inquest - Ignorance, Bad Planning Killed Leigh Bishop Dive Trip Participant

DONCASTER, UK — In pointed remarks that underscored the ignorance and bad planning by two British dive trip leaders who promoted and sold the holiday scuba diving package tour that killed bride-to-be Jayne Bloom, a UK coroner said divers should carefully consider and be fully aware of the level of emergency medical support available at specific dive destinations they intend to visit.
While Deputy Coroner Fred Curtis stopped short of recommending that dive trip leaders Leigh Bishop, who organized the trip, and Jeff Keep, the victim's fiancee and owner of the New Frontier Divng dive shop that promoted and sold it, be prosecuted for criminal misconduct that resulted in Bloom's death, his remarks left no doubt that he blamed the fatality, in part, on their failure to carefully research the dive destination and provide their customers with responsible and adequate emergency preparedness.
"Those who go to these remote parts (should) consider very carefully what kind of support there will be in incidents such as this," Curtis said.
Despite Keep's repeated assertions in online scuba diving chatrooms soon after Bloom's death that her "ascent was uneventful with all decompression stops completed correctly", the inquest heard expert testimony that she failed to maintain proper depth during the ascent and "ascended above proper safety levels 11 times".
Keep became intimately involved with the buxom Bloom after she signed up for one of his scuba diving courses.
Later, she proposed to him on stage at a UK dive trade show in a puerile public stunt cooked up by Bishop.
Their marriage ceremony, which was to be the climax of their Pacific island dream holiday, was canceled on June 30 soon after they arrived in Chuuk when Bloom died from severe injuries suffered while scuba diving and a two-hour delay in emergency medical treatment after uninformed dive trip leaders Bishop and Keep took her to an unmanned hyperbaric chamber.


Fatal mistakes
According to Keep, Bloom resurfaced from a rebreather decompression dive to a maximum depth of 57 meters (187 ft) and returned to the dive boat where she suddenly lost her vision and became very weak.
Despite receiving oxygen onboard the dive boat, Bloom soon lost consciousness and her condition worsened during the long 40-minute trip back to Blue Lagoon Resort, where the New Frontier Diving holiday package group had checked in two days before.

After the boat finally reached the resort and with a critically ill diver in need of immediate emergency medical care, dive trip leaders Keep and Bishop made a fatal mistake that delayed treatment for nearly an hour and a half and stemmed directly from their lack of emergency preparedness, their complete ignorance about how things work in Chuuk (and many other small and remote dive destinations) and their failure to acknowledge that Bloom was severely injured and required more than a quick "patch-up" at the local chamber before resuming their dream holiday diving the wrecks of Truk Lagoon.

Instead of rushing Bloom to the local hospital where she could first be stablized while doctors organized the island's emergency response hyperbaric medical team and a recompression table appropriate for Bloom's dive profile, Keep and Bishop wasted more precious time by taking her to the local hyperbaric chamber unaware that there was no one there to operate the facility.
"We decided to transfer Jayne to the chamber (but) when we arrived there it was unmanned," Keep complained unaware that Chuuk and many other small island destinations lack sufficient funding necessary to staff hyperbaric chambers on a 24/7 basis, but do provide an emergency response hyperbaric medical team typically deployed by local hospital ER personnel after scuba diving accident victims receive a thorough medical evaluation.


Still failing to understand the obvious -- that they needed to get a critically injured diver to hospital as fast as possible so that she could be treated and stablized -- Keep and Bishop wasted more time trying to find someone who could operate the chamber.​
"We couldn't (find) the operator," Keep complained.
As the still-unconscious Bloom started to spasm, Keep and Bishop finally understood that she was in critical condition and that they were involved with something far more serious than an unanticipated and unwelcome afternoon break from their tropical island diving adventures."Then (we) decided that Jayne condition (sic) had become critical so she needed to go to the hospital to be stabilized before she could start recompression theory (sic)," Keep explained.​

Too late


Nearly an hour and half after she reached shore and some two hours after she lost consciousness, Keep and Bishop finally got it right and took Bloom to hospital where she was stablized and evaluated as hospital officials deployed the stand-by local emergency hyperbaric medical team comprised of one doctor and two chamber technicians.
Based on Bloom's condition and her dive profile, which was downloaded from her dive computer, the emergency hyperbaric medical team applied a US Navy 6 recompression table that was extended to eight hours.
The doctor in charge of the hyperbaric medical treatment and one technician were in the chamber with Bloom during the eight hour session.
At about 2:30 a.m. on June 30, the still-unconscious Bloom was transferred back to hospital where she died about an hour later before she could be evacuated by air ambulance to Australia.
Bloom's body was eventually flown to Brisbane and returned to the UK for a post-mortem examination and funeral proceedings.

No problem


According to Keep, who is an IANTD technical diving instructor, there were no problems with Bloom's Megaladon closed-circuit rebreather and "...the ascent was uneventful with all decompression stops completed correctly."
According to unconfirmed reports, Keep and Bishop both resumed diving on the wrecks of Truk Lagoon soon after the fatal accident and completed their Chuuk holiday dive trip as planned with the exception of the wedding ceremony, which had to be canceled due to Bloom's tragic death.
According to DEMA, a California-based dive industry-marketing group, scuba diving is safer than bowling.
 
"According to DEMA, a California-based dive industry-marketing group, scuba diving is safer than bowling." Who's buying this?
 
"According to DEMA, a California-based dive industry-marketing group, scuba diving is safer than bowling." Who's buying this?

Yeah, that too!
 
Obviously a coroner who has no knowledge of adventure diving in remote locations. I thought it was only in the United States that we weren't responsible for our actions. I guess the UK is the same. Sad.
 
Still failing to understand the obvious -- that they needed to get a critically injured diver to hospital as fast as possible so that she could be treated and stablized -- Keep and Bishop wasted more time trying to find someone who could operate the chamber.​

And what exactly would the hospital have done with a badly bent diver?

My guess would have been that the hospital there is not a state of the art facility. Google seems to agree!
http://www.alertdiver.com/Bent_in_Chuuk
 
From reading the article supplied this is my understanding:

The chamber is only staffed on demand and is not located at the hospital. Protocol to activate emergency operation of the chamber is initiated by the doctors at the hospital, who can also assess the patient and provide appropriate intervention until transfer to the chamber is feasible. Yes it is a third world facility so the treatments provided may not match our expectations, but any treatment is better than none. I am also fairly convinced the chamber doctor would require a full and proper assessment of the patient before initiating any treatment protocol, which could be achieved at the hospital whilst waiting for the hyperbaric team.

Surely they had local divers on the boat who had knowledge of the local system?
 
Based on what I read of the hospital conditions it seems likely this woman would not have survived regardless. Its impossible to know but a friend who was treated in this facility did not receive the life saving chamber treatments he needed.

Alert Diver:
Hospitals in remote areas like Chuuk are not always like those at home. With no running water and no pillows, blankets or food for patients, if you want anything resembling a comfort item (including food), it must be brought with you or to you. I asked to go to the bathroom, and they took me to a stall with a toilet but no seat; the floor was so dirty I didn't know if I was stepping in human waste..................

I'd arrived at the hospital around 7 p.m. on a Tuesday, and we received word from the local chamber it had no available personnel to treat me. But unknown to me, the Odyssey's captain had contacted DAN® when it was first evident I needed help. By Wednesday afternoon, DAN had arranged for a medical transport to fly me to the Dive Locker on the U.S. naval base in Guam. A paramedic and registered nurse arrived with the air transport, looking like two angels in their professional attire. They settled me in, and we embarked on the short flight to Guam.

An Unusual Condition

The Dive Locker is a state-of-the-art U.S. Navy facility, and the personnel there are top notch. By the time I arrived, it had been more than a day since I'd last eaten, and I was immediately given what little food they had on hand before they sent out for more..............

I spent five hours in the chamber completing a Table 6 treatment. By its end, my back pain was gone, the skin marbling subsided, and I'd regained some feeling in my leg.

So Gary received no chamber treatments and no food at the hospital in Chuuk. Rather sad and beyond what is considered poor care. The moral of the story don't get bent in Truk!

This UK article seems hell bent on blaming the planners but the fact is that the medical facilities in Chuuk are beyond dismal.
 
"Buxom"...?

Gawd, I hate how CDNN writes. Please do not take anything from that site as fact. It was blocked from even being mentioned here for sometime but that created problems - so now we try to warn each other when they come up.

For more info on the accident, you can see Keep's personal report at A report of the loss of Jayne Bloom - Rebreather World

News story at Coroner raises fears over scuba diving after bride-to-be dies - Telegraph

Qualifications of both at New Frontier Diving - About
 
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"Buxom"...?

Gawd, I hate how CDNN writes. Please do not take anything from that site as fact. It was blocked from even being mentioned here for sometime but that created problems - so now we try to warn each other when they come up.

Yep... an awful and unprofessional piece of journalism...

Am I getting this right?.... the deceased was a qualified CCR Trimix pilot and IANTD Technical Supervisor.... but not considered competent to perform the most basic personal risk analysis when engaging on a commercially available (and very popular) dive trip? wtf?

The training given to achieve those qualifications could easily be referenced, to illustrate that the diver concerned (the deceased) did, in fact, possess the education to have made such a risk assessment - and could reasonably have been expected to have done that.

This UK article seems hell bent on blaming the planners but the fact is that the medical facilities in Chuuk are beyond dismal.

I think the article is confusing the difference between competence in diving operations and liability as a tour operator. The UK does have strict regulations concerning the responsibilities of those companies providing overseas holidays.

What's presented in the article doesn't necessarily illustrate a failure of either. (I don't think) that allocation of liability wouldn't be a decision for a coroner to make. Any legal case would (I think) have to reflect the competence of the local diving operation sub-contracted by the tour operator to support the diving activities... who would (in my mind) be the actor responsible for possessing and implementing the local knowledge necessary to deal with a diving accident.

If the tour operator could provide evidence that they had reasonable assurance that the sub-contracted diving operator was competent and fulfilled all reasonable criteria (defined by UK legislation on tour operators) then the tour operator would not hold that liability.
 
The chamber in Chuuk is about 800 yards from Blue Lagoon Resort. The hospital is over 5 miles I would guess. The 5 miles would take a normal car at least 30 minutes due to the state of the roads, of course you could to a bit quicker in an emergency. This means it would have taken a minimum of 60 minutes plus the time for the doctor's examination before she could have been put in the chamber.

The Chuuk hospital is not real good, although the doctors are very good from my personal experience. It really would seem that the Coroner does not have an understanding of what a third world country's roads and medical infrastructure are like. As to whether they should have contacted the hospital and tried to arrange for the chamber to be staffed immediately, not sure.

Very sad case.
 
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