Fatality at Peacock Springs today (07-07-2010)

[Superlyte27]

If they'd been diving peacock every week for 5 years wonder why they never got around to doing Full Cave?

I'm uncertain. I think he's full cave, she's not, but i'm guessing.

 

[TSandM]

I feel incredibly sorry for him. I can't imagine being unable to turn a buddy, and then going to wait for them where they should come out, and not finding them. I really don't even want to think about it.

I do think there are many things to criticize here, and once again, we are faced with a cave diving death of someone who had broken rules. Has anybody seen a non-medical death where someone hadn't? Are the rules THAT hard to follow?

I am tremendously sorry for the family of the woman who died. I am both sorry for, and angry at her; she had been educated, she knew the rules and she broke them. Whether setting spools played a role in this or not, doing a circuit almost certainly did. If she knew the cave, why did she panic? If she didn't, she was diving above her level of training, and this is why we are told not to do that.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

If she knew the cave, why did she panic? If she didn't, she was diving above her level of training, and this is why we are told not to do that.

I've been mulling that question over since I heard about this accident yesterday. It's not a particularly difficult circuit ... and each "leg" of that triangle has a different feel to it, and there's several recognizeable "landmarks" along the way. Both the mainline and Peanut line are well marked. Seems to me someone who'd been in that cave as often as she did would've known where they were.

Perhaps ... and this is supposition ... this was the first time she'd tried something like that. Lord knows there's plenty of Peacock to explore at the Intro level ... but after a few years it's conceivable that she felt she was ready to try something new ... and it bit her.

If the report we all read is anything to go by, it sounds like what killed her was stressing out and reacting without thinking ... can't do that in a cave, whatever level you're trained to ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[BabyDuck]

it's so sad. no matter if rule breaking or medical issues were causative or not, it's a horrible loss.

 

[FireInMyBones]

My sincerest condolences to her family. I hope that we can learn to stay respectful of the cave and its rules.
Does anyone know if the family knows yet?

 

[SuPrBuGmAn]

Someone died here. It's tragic. We don't know why it happened (yet). Medical or Pilot Error someone is gone now. Let's try to remember that when you are sitting high on your horse about what shoulda, coulda, woulda happened.

The problem with cave diving deaths is that someone had to die. I'm truly sorry for your loss, but perhaps you shouldn't be a part of this thread as its obviously going to strike home closer for you. Its standard procedure to pick a part what happens when we have a cave diving death, this is no exception, and hopefully it instills the rules put into place for all of us.

 

[Red-Dv]

It sounds like we have a lot of experts here that want to point out what they did wrong. Why don't we just hold are heads low for a day or two and hope that the diver in question finds some cool water with the big guy to play in.

 

[SuPrBuGmAn]

This is our way to learn from the mistakes of others, in hopes that it ingrains our training, and we can all learn from it. It shouldn't be taken personal.


No names here, personal stuff should go into the "Passing" forum.

 

[tstormdiver]

With maybe a few rare exceptions,... I don't think anyone is purposely trying to be rude or condescending, here. Sometimes the written word can not invoke the inflections that speech can to make facts sound like facts, instead of ridicule. This can make the writing seem harsher than it really is intended to be. When something tragic like this, regardless of the cause, happens we want to learn from it. That is why threads like this are started. In my case (& I would think in many other's) if an accident ever occurred to me/ them, I/ they would want the incident investigated, analysed & discussed, especially if it will prevent another accident. Even if the anaylysis & ineveitable speculation does seems harsh.

 

[ucfdiver]

The more I think about this, personally I don't think we're doing ourselves a great service to point to training as the issue here. I knew from cavern on that maintaining a continuous guideline to the surface was a rule. That's not a full cave concept. Had she marked the jump improperly, I'd say full cave could have prevented this. Personally I think we focus too much on "learning the cave" and I really don't think it works during a panic. Perhaps this diver had learned the cave enough to start visual jumping? Bruce and his buddy nearly did the same thing several months back at Ginnie, and they were full cave.

Familiar Cave + Panic + Visual Jumps = Diver Death two times now in the past year.