Fatality Cabo San Lucas March 3

[caboticket]

of course, the standard is the best in town, that's why 4 shops use that air fill, the tanks that were used, were owned by the guide, and all the equipment used was the guides. there has to be another underlying reason, the tanks from the shop were filled at the same time, as were the other shops and since the date, tanks have been filled, with no problems. there is a full log of filter exchange and cleaning of the lines available. which may lead to the air that was left in the tanks from the previous fill which wasn't the shop in question, (if bad air was the case) in which case, it wouldn't be detected as the air going in to the tank was clean. the reason i am jumping onto the newspaper sites is that the jury has been already decided and its the air fill. which is a very good way to ruin the reputation of a very good dive shop, that has done nothing wrong. in all cases, it is not determined what has happened, again, it is a very unfortunate event.

 

[DandyDon]

Cabo, in case you missed my post: I just have a hunch that there is not a CO monitor on any compressors in the state, nor a CO tank tester. Would I be wrong in that assumption...??

No known past problems is not a valid claim for a compressor that does not maintain quality monitoring and testing. When other CO fatalities have been established, it's always their first problem.

 

[caboticket]

sorry, can't answer if there is a CO monitor, i don't know, but the point i am making is, if the air that was in the tanks already was bad (remembering the tanks were not owned by the shop), then it wouldn't show up on the monitor. i do know on the same night of the fill, 32 other tanks were filled, none of which had problems, nor in either of the 100+ fills since that night. so in this particular case, there has to be other factors at play.

 

[DandyDon]

There are numerous ways that bad tank fills can occur within a run of fills not known to have problems. I'll not go into details here. I don't guess you know of any CO tank testers available locally?

No known past problems is not a valid claim for a compressor that does not maintain quality monitoring and testing. When other CO fatalities have been established, it's always their first problem.

 

[Dive-aholic]

From a more detailed news report of this event: multiple divers complained of bad air and breathing difficulty (found after a 15-second Google search; emphases added):
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CO is odorless and tasteless. This report only goes further to indicate this was not a CO incident. Anyone who knows me knows I'm one of the biggest advocates of testing all gas for CO. I've witnessed first hand what CO does. It does not make someone feel like they are having trouble breathing. The gas was probably contaminated, but CO was not the only culprit, if a culprit at all.

 

[Crush]

That settle it, I'm buying a CO analyser tomorrow.

I am just going to make sure I dive with DandyDon all the time and use his analyzer.

sorry, can't answer if there is a CO monitor, i don't know, but the point i am making is, if the air that was in the tanks already was bad (remembering the tanks were not owned by the shop), then it wouldn't show up on the monitor. i do know on the same night of the fill, 32 other tanks were filled, none of which had problems, nor in either of the 100+ fills since that night. so in this particular case, there has to be other factors at play.

You would think that if the DM's air was bad either his tanks would be full of bad air (and not need to be topped-up) or he would have breathed off of them during a dive, killing himself, and not be around to need a top-up. BTW, where does the conjecture about a top-up come from?

 

[EastEndDiver]

I like the way DandyDon thinks!

 

[DandyDon]

CO is odorless and tasteless. This report only goes further to indicate this was not a CO incident. Anyone who knows me knows I'm one of the biggest advocates of testing all gas for CO. I've witnessed first hand what CO does. It does not make someone feel like they are having trouble breathing. The gas was probably contaminated, but CO was not the only culprit, if a culprit at all.

Well, maybe. What you state is true, but a situation that allows some contaminants in might lead to a higher chance of CO as well. But again, there are only two ways to know: test the blood or the air. The latter is always the preferable, pre-dive approach.

 

[Johnoly]

...... i do know on the same night of the fill, 32 other tanks were filled, none of which had problems, nor in either of the 100+ fills since that night.....

Not related to this accident, but one cause of high CO is compressor flashover from high operating temps. Not every compressor runs a high temp expensive synthetic oil. A flash over is not a continuous event. It can last for 5 seconds, or 5 minutes and even on/off/on/off for the same tank fill. These same high temps are dangerous for the filter system too. If Hopcalite gets much above 100 degrees Fahrenheit, it will no longer convert CO to CO2.This is the reason why 2 tanks filled from the very same compressor sequentially can have one tank full of CO and the very next tank perfectly fine.

 

[boulderjohn]

Let's assume that the tanks were partially filled with contaminated air prior to be completely filled by another operator. If so, that original contaminated air would have had to be significantly diluted by the new, pure air being used for the fill. That mans that the bad air remnant must have been very highly contaminated in order to create that level of a problem after the dilution. If so, than that original bad fill must have been much, much worse than the final fill that caused the fatality.

Why is it that no one noticed it when those tanks were used when filled with that highly contaminated air?

Or am I missing something in this logic?