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Death of cave diver at Mt Gambier, South Australia
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ScoobaDood
Contributor
Here is the latest news on the incident Police investigate diving tragedy
Sas
Contributor
Here is the full text of the article:
"Police investigate diving tragedy
Posted on March 16, 2010, 12:12pm
Police are investigating the death of a Melbourne man at Mooraks Kilsby Cave.
The man, aged 52 and from the eastern suburb of Langwarrin, died around noon on Saturday while diving with a friend, also from Victoria, who tried to save him when he got into trouble.
Police divers retrieved his body on Sunday afternoon and investigators are still awaiting post mortem results to assist in determining the cause of death.
The incident is believed to have happened at about 32 meters below the surface in the complex cave system, possibly due to the divers equipment malfunctioning.
The possibility of an underlying medical condition being a factor in the death has not been ruled out.
Paramedic David Adkins said the dead mans diving partner had noticed his friends distress and attempted to assist.
Mr Adkins said a brief struggle was believed to have occurred, with the deceased pulling off his mask and mouth piece and trying to access his partners.
The other diver said his friend became quite aggressive, grasping at his mask and equipment, Mr Adkins said.
He became far too aggressive to buddy breathe and in the end it became a matter of the other diver heading for the surface or we would have been looking for two bodies.
The surviving diver notified emergency services and was treated for shock by paramedics at the scene before talking to police, who were notified around 12.15pm.
Circumstances are still under investigation, leading to police releasing few details, however the South Australia Police Underwater Recovery Unit members from Adelaide dived to depths of 50 metres yesterday to retrieve equipment from the sinkhole.
Cave Divers Association of Australia president Steve Trewavas said the national organisation leased the site from the landowner in the area.
He said both divers involved in the incident were cave level members of the association, with mid-level accreditation.
Kilsby Cave is classed as a sinkhole dive, theoretically being the easiest level, which Mr Trewavas said left fellow divers shocked at the tragedy.
We use the sinkhole for beginner dives as it is easily accessed and has an open cabin area and we conduct about 1000 dives a year there, Mr Trewavas said.
The past 40 years has seen the sinkhole become a popular diving location, given its clear water and the fact divers are able to descend up to 40 meters below the surface.
Over the period there have been few incidents reported involving death or injury, according to Mr Trewavas, with the last fatality in the region being in 1984 at Piccaninnie Ponds.
A report on the latest incident will be prepared for the Coroner."
"Police investigate diving tragedy
Posted on March 16, 2010, 12:12pm
Police are investigating the death of a Melbourne man at Mooraks Kilsby Cave.
The man, aged 52 and from the eastern suburb of Langwarrin, died around noon on Saturday while diving with a friend, also from Victoria, who tried to save him when he got into trouble.
Police divers retrieved his body on Sunday afternoon and investigators are still awaiting post mortem results to assist in determining the cause of death.
The incident is believed to have happened at about 32 meters below the surface in the complex cave system, possibly due to the divers equipment malfunctioning.
The possibility of an underlying medical condition being a factor in the death has not been ruled out.
Paramedic David Adkins said the dead mans diving partner had noticed his friends distress and attempted to assist.
Mr Adkins said a brief struggle was believed to have occurred, with the deceased pulling off his mask and mouth piece and trying to access his partners.
The other diver said his friend became quite aggressive, grasping at his mask and equipment, Mr Adkins said.
He became far too aggressive to buddy breathe and in the end it became a matter of the other diver heading for the surface or we would have been looking for two bodies.
The surviving diver notified emergency services and was treated for shock by paramedics at the scene before talking to police, who were notified around 12.15pm.
Circumstances are still under investigation, leading to police releasing few details, however the South Australia Police Underwater Recovery Unit members from Adelaide dived to depths of 50 metres yesterday to retrieve equipment from the sinkhole.
Cave Divers Association of Australia president Steve Trewavas said the national organisation leased the site from the landowner in the area.
He said both divers involved in the incident were cave level members of the association, with mid-level accreditation.
Kilsby Cave is classed as a sinkhole dive, theoretically being the easiest level, which Mr Trewavas said left fellow divers shocked at the tragedy.
We use the sinkhole for beginner dives as it is easily accessed and has an open cabin area and we conduct about 1000 dives a year there, Mr Trewavas said.
The past 40 years has seen the sinkhole become a popular diving location, given its clear water and the fact divers are able to descend up to 40 meters below the surface.
Over the period there have been few incidents reported involving death or injury, according to Mr Trewavas, with the last fatality in the region being in 1984 at Piccaninnie Ponds.
A report on the latest incident will be prepared for the Coroner."
This is an odd one isn't it (at least given the story we are relying on)?
Experienced and in a fairly easy site apparently. Even if experienced can mean different things to different people it still seems by all accounts that they were certainly experienced enough to be where they were.
If it's a medical problem it doesn't really sound like a heart attack. If they were on rebreathers it would make more sense (panic due to improper gas mixture or something along those lines). However, they were on OC.
Panic certainly seems to play a major role as the supposedly OOA diver took both his reg and his mask(?) off. Struggling with a buddy attempting to share air sounds more like a new diver's panic...I guess panic is panic.
Experienced divers panicking like that in not too difficult conditions to the point of one dying doesn't make a lot of sense...so of course this probably isn't quite the way it happened. Still it's quite odd.
Occam's Razor generally applies to these things but it's not providing much guidance here!
You'd think a 7' hose (if applicable here) would allow the buddy to hang around even while keeping his own mask and fighting off the victim a bit if necessary. If it really was an OOA situation the panic would have been under control soon with the air sharing.
Running out of air for experienced cave divers doesn't seem all that likely either. It looks a bit like both divers panicked to a degree.
Experienced and in a fairly easy site apparently. Even if experienced can mean different things to different people it still seems by all accounts that they were certainly experienced enough to be where they were.
If it's a medical problem it doesn't really sound like a heart attack. If they were on rebreathers it would make more sense (panic due to improper gas mixture or something along those lines). However, they were on OC.
Panic certainly seems to play a major role as the supposedly OOA diver took both his reg and his mask(?) off. Struggling with a buddy attempting to share air sounds more like a new diver's panic...I guess panic is panic.
Experienced divers panicking like that in not too difficult conditions to the point of one dying doesn't make a lot of sense...so of course this probably isn't quite the way it happened. Still it's quite odd.
Occam's Razor generally applies to these things but it's not providing much guidance here!
You'd think a 7' hose (if applicable here) would allow the buddy to hang around even while keeping his own mask and fighting off the victim a bit if necessary. If it really was an OOA situation the panic would have been under control soon with the air sharing.
Running out of air for experienced cave divers doesn't seem all that likely either. It looks a bit like both divers panicked to a degree.
I have known the diver that passed away for 11 years and my wife for 20 years, a combined 31 years, so I therefore feel I know enough to say the following;
He was a health professional, and very experienced diver and at this moment in time I think the information presented in "The border match article" is a load of crock.
He was the most level headed person you could meet, and very logical in his chain of thought and without a doubt not aggressive, ie. not one to panic easily.
I understand that anyone without air will start to panic and become aggressive to receive air, but unless there was a lack of enough air for both to resurface this should have been a near text-book return to terra firma.
Maybe they both forgot to have adequate backup supplies for an emergency, but I find this hard to believe (time will tell).
In any case, I do not want his name tarnished by an article which in my opinion paints him in a bad light.
He was a health professional, and very experienced diver and at this moment in time I think the information presented in "The border match article" is a load of crock.
He was the most level headed person you could meet, and very logical in his chain of thought and without a doubt not aggressive, ie. not one to panic easily.
I understand that anyone without air will start to panic and become aggressive to receive air, but unless there was a lack of enough air for both to resurface this should have been a near text-book return to terra firma.
Maybe they both forgot to have adequate backup supplies for an emergency, but I find this hard to believe (time will tell).
In any case, I do not want his name tarnished by an article which in my opinion paints him in a bad light.
ScoobaDood
Contributor
B1llyB0y,
My condolences...as I trudge through the reports on such accidents it seems that like with most things, the Media rarely gets it right when they report. It is hard to say what happened in that cave, and even the survivors recollection will be squewed to some degree. In the end, a fellow diver is gone, and we are left with a ton of questions as to how it could happen, and how we can avoid this happening to anyone else.
Let's hope that we can get some good information in time so that we can all learn from this tragedy.
Again, my condolences.
Sas
Contributor
I just read (for the first time) the article detailing the entanglement aspect of this accident. I can see how running OOA and being entangled could result in more panic than either of those occurring singly. If it's just cave line you would think that the buddy could easily remove it before an OOA could occur. So either the entanglement is a bigger deal than anyone seems to know about or their gas planning was an issue. I'd guess that there's something more to the entanglement than simple cave line.
Very unfortunate in any event.
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