Four dead in Italian cave

[Thalassamania]

The answer is, I think, pretty simple ... it is an optimizing problem and people are bad at optimization. Clearly swimming through an underwater arch is no problem and a mile long tube with multiple branches and lots of silt can be a major death trap.

Somewhere in between lies the situation that good sense should prevent the untrained, or under-trained, from undertaking ... kinda like all diving, easy to get in "too deep" before, in your ignorance, you realize that there might be a problem. Lots of folks learn to dive and suffer a bad experience that they did not expect and drop out ... the story is all too common. The problem with overheads is that dropping out is every bit as easy, just more permanent.

 

[gianaameri]

When you see a dark and spooky hole filled with water like this image from the recent TV program of the entrance of the cave we are talking about, how difficult is it to understand not to go in without prior proper training, equipment, preparation...?

 

[Fish-R-Man]

I have a good friend in Mexico who is a dive guide and instructor. He is a really great diver and is always professional. Just recently he related a story to me about a wreck that he a some friends decided to dive on. We had been discussing a cave dive I was doing the next day and said it was time for him to take some of the classes.


What happened in his situation is, he entered a section of the wreck without a continuous line. He was aware of the possibility of silting out the space and was very careful with finning and hand movements to reduce the possibility of reducing the viz. what he didn't take into account was the exhaled air bubbles knocked the silt from the overhead and within minutes he had zero viz. He said that it was just blind luck that he got out. He also said never again would he enter an overhead environment without the proper training and kit.

If this can happen to someone that basically lives in the water, the average vacation divers have a much greater chance for a tragic event to occur.

 

[bowlofpetunias]

There really is no mystery here other than human nature. People always think "It won't happen to me" They think it when they get behind the wheel after drinking, when they speed and over estimate their driving skills. These errors are proven to cause many more deaths than diving in caves without training. There are LAWS, law enforcement officers and publicity campaigns to educate people but people still do these things in spite of horrific experiences and pictures in the news. I don't think we can expect people to see their actions diving a "safe caves everybody does it" with more clarity. I am not saying that it is right to dive beyond your training/ability but that people are inclined to poor judgement and this is only one example!

 

[gianaameri]

Poor judgement is an interesting topic in this case.

There was a cave guide (now dead).

An instructor to lead the group just behind the cave guide (who survived).

An instructor to close the group at the end of the group (who survived).

The cave was surveyed and classed as an "easy cave" for "everybody" by a cave instructor and member of the national speleological committee.

The cave package tour was sold to newly certified basic open water divers by the Dive Center who certified them.

Looks like poor judgement by a lot of paid professionals here, not a teenager feeling invincible and going through an experimentation phase.

 

[bowlofpetunias]

Poor judgement is an interesting topic in this case.

There was a cave guide (now dead).

An instructor to lead the group just behind the cave guide (who survived).

An instructor to close the group at the end of the group (who survived).

The cave was surveyed and classed as an "easy cave" for "everybody" by a cave instructor and member of the national speleological committee.

The cave package tour was sold to newly certified basic open water divers by the Dive Center who certified them.

Looks like poor judgement by a lot of paid professionals here, not a teenager feeling invincible and going through an experimentation phase.

I certainly agree with you on this! My comment was more related to the number of people who imply "The divers who died are at fault for going beyond their training. It is the divers responsibility to assess the dive and only do what they are trained for. Certainly these are valid statements to some degree. The divers may indeed have displayed poor judgement by trusting those who indicated this was a safe dive for them I certainly think there are more than enough directions for fingers to point when it comes to attributing blame for this tragedy!

 

[rjk75]

I wonder if it would be possible to create a grading scale, such as is used to rate the difficulty of ascents in rock climbing.

I wonder if professional (i.e., industrial) divers have anything like a CSEP (Confined Space Entry Procedure) for underwater work? I know the stipulations for surface CSEPs are pretty rigorous and full of checks and counter-checks, etc., but I wonder how onerous would something like that be for underwater confined spaces?

 

[gianaameri]

I certainly agree with you on this! My comment was more related to the number of people who imply "The divers who died are at fault for going beyond their training. It is the divers responsibility to assess the dive and only do what they are trained for. Certainly these are valid statements to some degree. The divers may indeed have displayed poor judgement by trusting those who indicated this was a safe dive for them I certainly think there are more than enough directions for fingers to point when it comes to attributing blame for this tragedy!

There is a "culture" in Palinuro (the locality where the accident took place) that there are "easy caves" which are for "everybody." The culture justifies the very lucrative business of selling package cave tours (trip, hotel, gear... and the cave tour of course) of the several local caves. The dead divers had bought one such package tour through a Dive Center in Rome who had just recently certified them as basic Open Water Divers (they had no clue about caves or cave diving and only a handful of dives in their logbook).

The caves although accessible by sea and in part formed by erosion, are dissolution caves. The geology is typical of the Karst. The presence of H2S potentiates the Karstic dissolution process.

So, these are caves to all effects with all the risks inherent to cave diving. As I mentioned earlier, you can tell you are entering a cave by looking at the cave entrance.

Indeed this is the mother of all cave diving accidents which has ever happened in the history of cave diving!

 

[gianaameri]

There is a recent video from an experienced anaesthesiologist and rebreather cave explorer here:

Andrew Pitkin - Cave Exploration using Rebreathers on Vimeo

where one of the key messages about cave diving safety is "Never follow anyone blindly."

In terms of lessons to be learnt, I think by watching the eyewitness report here:

L'Avv. Benedetta Sirignano a Chi l'ha visto? - YouTube

"Never follow anyone blindly" in a cave (or wreck) is the key lesson to be learnt.

In the video above one of the divers ("ML" - Maria Laura) who survived this tragic cave penetration incident has drawn a diagram of how the group of nine people entered the cave and then proceeded into a silty and narrow passage.

First was the cave guide, then an instructor, then a diver (Mr. Panaiotis who died in the accident) let through first the eye-witness describing the incident (Maria Laura) because "she had a light" (and he did not), and then more went in, blindly following the "guide."

In my opinion (as still an inexperienced cave diver) had a guide line been used and had all divers some basic cave training this accident may have never had happened.

 

[bowlofpetunias]

They didn't all have lights:shocking: insanity on top of insanity! I can understand to some degree the new divers may not have the training to understand what they were getting into and therefor blindly trusted the "Dive Professionals". Going into a dark place without a light and backup light