More L.A. County fatality stats (Casino Point & others)

[Ken Kurtis]

This is an offshoot of the thread asking about fatalities at Casino Point (the Avalon Underwater Park). Capt. John Kades at the L.A. County Department of Coroner, the guy I report to directly and consult with most often, has done an excellent job of compiling fatality stats for L.A. County diving going back to 1994. (The pre-1994 records are a bit hazy but John is working on those.) Since I gave the "Why Divers Die" lecture to the Aqaurium of the Pacific Scientific Divers class last week and used these numbers, I thought I'd share them here as well. Bear in mind these are for Los Anegles County only. They do not include deatsh in San Diego, Orange, Ventura, Santa Barbara, Riverside, or San Bernardino Counties (collectively "SoCal").

Also understand that when a death occurs at sea, it is the first port-of-call that determines the "location" of the death. Hypothetically, a diver diving at San Migeul Island (Santa Barbara County) has a problem, is airlifted to the Catalina Chamber (L.A. County) and is pronounced dead at the Chamber. That becomes an L.A. County death. Same diver is pronounced dead on the boat, is not evacuated from the boat, and the boat heads back to its home port of Santa Barbara, it becomes a Santa Barbara County death. Same boat instead is based in Ventura and heads back there, it becomes a Ventura County death. So just because a death is tagged to a specific county doesn't necessarily mean the accident that caused the death occured within the boundaries of that county.

Here are the stats for Los Angeles County:

TOTAL FATALITIES 1994-2011 (18 years) - 81
AVERAGE FATALIES PER YEAR - 4.5
FEWEST FATALITIES IN A YEAR - 1 (1999)
MOST FATALITIES IN A YEAR - 7 (2002, 2009, 2010, 2011)
GENDER OF THOSE WHO DIED - 84% male (seems to fairly closely mirror the presumed % of male divers overall)
AVERAGE AGE OF THOSE WHO DIED - 39.9 YEARS OLD (Oldest - 78, Youngest - 15)
MEDICAL COMPONENT AS SIGNIFICANT FACTOR - 39.8% (not always cardidac but frequently is)
DEATHS WHILE DIVING ON CHARTER BOAT TRIPS - 25 (31%)
DEATHS WHILE DIVING AT CASINO POINT - 20 (25%)
DEATHS WHILE DIVING ON PRIVATE BOATS, FROM THE BEACH, ETC. - 36 (44%)
DEATHS FROM NATURAL CAUSES - 4 (it was their time and they happened to be underwater)
DEATHS WITH ALCOHOL/DRUGS AS A FACTOR - 3
DEATHS WHOSE CAUSE WAS RULED "UNDETERMINED" - 3 (a medically conclusive answer can't always be found 100% of the time)
DEATHS WHILE SKIN- OR FREE-DIVING - 6
DEATHS WHILE DIVING WITH REBREATHERS - 2 (they hapened one month apart in late summer 2006)
DEATHS OF COMMERCIAL DIVERS - 2

- Ken (Forensic Consultant - L.A. County Coroner)

 

[divengolf]

My take from this is that two numbers are significant:

- 4.5 deaths/year average
- Most deaths recently; 2009, 2010 and 2011.

The latter MAY say something about the dumbing down of training in recent years. Too bad that he was not able to get data on amount of experience/recent dives of the deceased.

I don't know the area, but 25% at one spot seems rather high unless that's one of the few places to dive in LA County.

Just my 2 psi.

 

[Ken Kurtis]

I don't know the area, but 25% at one spot seems rather high unless that's one of the few places to dive in LA County.

IMHO, it's not high for a number of reasons. (Disclaimer: I'm not a statistician but I like crunching numbers to see what they can tell us.)

If you divided L.A. County diving into three areas (1) Charter boat, (2) Casino Point, and (3) Everywhere else, if there was an even spread of fatalities between the three, you'd expect 33% for each area. From that standpoint, Casino Point would be under the average, boats about on par, and everything else over.

But you also have to factor in the number of dives done at each place. This is where the guesswork comes in because there is no hard data to give us accurate counts. To put it in math terms, we know the numerator (# of deaths) but we don't know the denominator (# of dives).

If you just look at certified divers, my GUESS would be that 80% of the diving that's done in L.A. County is done from charter boats (and it's usually multiple dives). So you'd assume that, all things being equal, statistically 80% (or whatever number you want to assign to charter boat dives) of the fatalities would come from boats. But that number is only 31% so it seems that the % of charter boat fatalities is significanlty lower than the % of overall dives they represent.

Casino Point is a very heavily-dived spot. It is used routinely by instructors to conduct open-water training dives. Most of the diving is done Saturday/Sunday and it's not unusal in the summertime to go to the Park and find 200 people there diving, some certified, many taking classes or training. (And sometimes the Park is pretty empty.) Most of them are doing 2 or 3 dives each day. The fatalities there are RARELY students-in-training. It's frequently certified divers, some who haven't been diving for a while, who go to the Park because it's perceived as a "safe" place to dive.

Here are my made-up PURE SPECULATION numbers to give us denominators (L.A. County only):

400 people charter boat diving each week, averaging 3 dives/person x 52 weeks = 62,400 dives/year
250 people diving Casino Point each week, averaging 2.5 dives/person x 52 weeks = 32,500 dives/year
100 people diving from beach or pvt boats averaging 2 dives/person x 52 weeks = 10,400 dives/year
TOTAL DIVES/YEAR = 105,300

If you accept my numbers (and they might be a bit high on estimating the number of dives or divers annually), then you've got boats accounting for 59% of the dives but producing only 31% of the fatalities. You've got Casino Point producing 31% of the dives and 25% of the fatalties. And you've got beach/private producing 10% of the dives but 44% of the fatalties. Why?

In the case of the boats, what do you have that you don't have (mostly) on the beach or the private boats? You have captains, crew, and DMs who brief you on the dive spot, may assist you if you're having minor problems, may suggest you don't do a dive that's beyond your means, and - perhaps most significantly - are ready to respond if you surface in trouble. That pro-activeness may help reduce the % of fataltiies below the % that the overall activity occurs.

Likewise, at Casino Point, you've got dozens of professional-level people ready to help. If a diver yells for help, chances are there will be three or four people swimming out immediately to provide assistance. It's not as focused as it might be on a boat, so that might account for the two numbers being closer together.

But on beach and private boat dives, there are rarely DMs around to assist or advise and if you get in trouble, chances are that you're on your own. And if your buddy can't jump in and save you, that might be it. So lack of professional-level people to respond to a diving emergency might account for the disparagy between the presumed % of beach/private dives and the % of the overall fatalties they represent.

But I want to hammer one home other point. When we look at fatality stats, regardless of where they occur, 2/3 of the time the fatality can directly be traced to diver eorror. And many times, that's running out of air. If we simply can teach oursevles (and our newbies) to dive smarter all the time, we could IMMEDIATELY cut the number of deaths by almost 70%.

- Ken

 

[drbill]

Thanks for providing those statistics, Ken. I think they will be very helpful.

Based on my observations, I think Ken is being very conservative on the number of divers per week at Casino Point. Of course it varies substantially between summer and winter, but we can easily get 250 divers in a day here during summer (and we've estimated as many as 450 on a single day in the past). Of course I dove the park all by my lonesome last night and often midweek during winter. If Ken's estimate for the park is low, that would further improve the park's safety record.

 

[TSandM]

If we simply can teach oursevles (and our newbies) to dive smarter all the time, we could ​

IMMEDIATELY cut the number of deaths by almost 70%.

This is an incredibly sad statement, but tracks the DAN data on diver deaths, too.

Gas management -- plan the gas; plan the dive, and monitor the progress of gas consumption and compare it to the gas plan. It's easy, but it isn't taught.

 

[Thiad]

That OOA number would be interesting to know. Understanding it better might help put a greater emphasis on teaching gas management to new divers. Understanding where those divers fell into the training regiment might help, too. How many were OW, AOW, etc? I know you can beat statistics to death, but you can also pull so much information from them.

Yet to Ken's point, without knowing the number of divers in any given year and only having a "guestimate" of where divers dive, the number of deaths in Catalina is somewhat misleading. It doesn't provide any indication of how safe a place is or isn't. I agree that it is a very safe place to dive simply for the fact of the volume of people - very well trained people, just as Ken indicates, with medical services almost living at the site.

What is sad to see is the number of deaths over the past 3 years. Is there any correlation between the increase and the number of divers in the sport? Has LACo seen a significant increase in people taking up the sport? Or, is it training? Or what? That's a trend that needs to be reversed.

 

[ktomlinson]

Thank you for posting this data. I am curious how the authorities determine natural cause of death vs other causes?

 

[Peter Guy]

Ken -- thank you for the stats. I really wonder if any significant additional training would signficantly effect the fatality rate. (Thal -- before you chime in, I'm referring to reasonably acceptable training within a recreational scheme.)

Question -- any stats on the fatality rate of LA County graduates? Since the LA County program is often held up as the (a?) "gold standard" has there been any longitudinal study of:

a. How many graduates continue to dive?

b. Of those who dive, their dive history (i.e., tropical vacation, "active", etc.)?

c. Accident rates for all.

Ken, of the fatalities, any common thread regarding training? In particular, how long had it been since they'd had a class/training prior to their incident?

Questions, questions, always questions.

 

[muzikbiz22]

Question -- any stats on the fatality rate of LA County graduates? Since the LA County program is often held up as the (a?) "gold standard" has there been any longitudinal study of . . . . .

First off, thanks Ken, these are great stats !!!

Second, Peter Guy poses a bit of a "backhanded" question, (and I'm not trying to start a huge debate here, no malicious intent). As stringent as the LA County program may be, (or not be), ANYTHING can happen to ANYONE at ANYTIME, ANYWHERE, regardless of certification/training. Accidents, bad decisions, bad luck and stupidity happen to ALL OF US, be it a scuba diver, (PADI, NAUI or otherwise), Harvard graduate or hair stylist. Plus I think it would be a bit of a reach in breaking down fatalities by Certification Agency/Education, I could be wrong here. In the end, yes, ANY information is helpful to us all, and I'm certain willing to listen & learn, and be that much better of a diver, as well.

 

[divengolf]

This is an incredibly sad statement, but tracks the DAN data on diver deaths, too.

Gas management -- plan the gas; plan the dive, and monitor the progress of gas consumption and compare it to the gas plan. It's easy, but it isn't taught.

As I recall according to DAN, at least half of diver deaths are related to OOA or low on air causes. Yet the agencies fail to teach even basic gas management in BOW or AOW.

I've only been diving about 8 years (500+ dives) and first learned my gas management from Lamont's Rock Bottom paper. Thanks again Lamont!!