PADI Rescue Diver class near miss (and lessons learned)

[Petedives]

Peter,

But this sentence is a problem.

When you are ascending (and trying to do something else simultaneously, such as screw with your regulator while it's out of your mouth), "clamping your jaws shut" is a recipe for a lung over-expansion injury.

Remember that bit about "never hold your breath: exhale out a tiny stream of bubbles" each time your reg is out of your mouth? It's important...make that a habit.

If there was any air actually *in* my lungs, I would be exhaling. There wasn't a
cubic millimeter, I had just exhaled through his reg, hence the reference to being
at (bottom lung).

Peter

 

[Petedives]

I managed, but I wasn't expecting the situation. Personally, I feel far more
comfortable by myself than with an unknown quantity swimming next to me.

Seems to me, in all reality, I need more training, practice, and preperation
to deal with the antics of the person diving next to me, than I do to just have
a great time diving by myself.

As far as the general constructive criticisms about 50% responsibility, whether
or not my OW skills are up to par, etc. I don't disagree about anything but the
line about finding my reg. I know the armsweep manuver just fine, without
having to think about it.

Mostly, what scared me was the barely noticable transition between practice
drill for a not terribly difficult to manage emergency, and an actual emergency
with several factors involved.

Towards that end, I really like this quote:

Emergencies have an annoying habit of not going as planned.

Truth be told, there shouldn't have ever been an actual emergency
anyway. Fact is, there was another emergency during the same day
with another member of the class when his buddy took his acting as
a panicked diver under water just a tiny bit too seriously and almost
drowned him.

Peter

 

[DandyDon]

Avoid this attitude. It has gotten me into bad situations.

2. Better to dive solo than with a buddy you can't rely on to do the right thing.

This one is okay...

5. I need to rig my own solo diving gear and not trust buddies, even if I have
someone swimming next to me.

Ultimately, become good enough to take care of yourself and the other both.

BTW, you can get Google Spell Check that works on Scuba Board without typing offsite and pasting here. I have it, use it sometimes. :blush:

 

[ChrisA]

Two weeks ago I was in a class, they told us after an exercise to "just swimm around and burn off the air -- Have fun." I'm not expecting anything. I'm looking at fishes at maybe 40 feet.

Out of "noware" someone swims up to me fast with no reg in his mouth grabs my BC and spins me around and he pulls the reg away from my mouth hard. So hard the ruber mouthpeice come loose and is lost. This guy looked to be in a full-on panick. OK so now my octo is the only functional second stange. We do the buddy breathing thng and slowly accent to the surface.

I was laughing when we came up. The instructor had me fooled for a sort while. I did not recognize this as a drill untill after I had unclipped the octo and looked at the diver through his mask and saw who he was.

Had this really been real buddy breathing would had been an important skill. Even if you dive solo someone may still find you.

They did some other things to us durring that boat trip too. But none of them fooled me. For example we had a "missing diver" did a roll call and the guy was not on the boat.

 

[ChrisA]

I managed, but I wasn't expecting the situation. Personally, I feel far more
comfortable by myself than with an unknown quantity swimming next to me.

But that's not the point of a rescue class is it. What you learn in rescue is how to help ideots who act stupidly and get themselves in throuble. You are being trained as a "rescue diver" by definition that means dealing with unexpected things and mostly other divers that did something wrong. Being able to deal with "an unknown quantity swimming next to you" is the point of the class. They should have taught how to recognize potential problems, how to prevent them and finally what to do if the problem escalates to the point of a rescue.

So you were not xpecting the situation. No one expects an ir-rational OOA diver to come at you but you should be trainned to handle it.

 

[lhunt99]

I learned a very similar lesson in my rescue class, although not quite in such dangerous circumstances. We had to do a drill in the pool in which we took a breath off snorkel and hit the bottom in full scuba (though without regs). We then had to do at least 3 somersaults. By the time we were done with that, we were hurting for air. We then had to swim the length of the pool to our buddy who was facing away from us and didn't know when we were coming. It was crazy! We secured the octo, and hit the surface. Obviously, at any time we could have surfaced, so it wasn't a particularly dangerous drill.

Was your rescue class through PADI? I recently completed my RD course through PADI and though I felt like the instructor did a good job of pushing the students, we certainly weren't put through the drills you described?

 

[Petedives]

BTW, you can get Google Spell Check that works on Scuba Board without typing offsite and pasting here. I have it, use it sometimes. :blush:

And apparently, I needed to. I must be slipping.



Peter

 

[xScubaStephx]

Its easy to say what I would have done sitting here.But it seems like an uncontrolled ascent buddy breathing could have been slowed by venting his bc for him as well as your own.In cavern and cave classes were taught to have our backup reg on a short necklace of shock cord so theres no reaching around for it.And in a total siltout coming out on a line if a buddy needs air he takes the one out of your mouth,which is on a 7 ft hose for single file egress from a cave.A nice buddy would reach up and tug on it gently,but in a panic it might get pulled quicker than youd like.But were trained to always donate the reg in our mouth,and easily go to backup 4 inches under the chin.

 

[jeckyll]

Steph: Now you've done it. It's going to turn into the "a long hose w/ bungee vs. standard" octo thread



P.S.: I completely agree, but that's another story

 

[Mako Mark]

reading through this incident, I was wondering where was the instructor was through this.

If he/she was doing their job this incident wouldnt have happened.