One dead, two injured - volunteer work dives - Thailand

[DandyDon]

Another version here: Experienced diver's death at Similans baffles park officials

This story: One Diver Dead, Two in Phuket Decompression Chamber: Day Out at Similans Goes Wrong - Phuket Wan

PHUKET: One diver is dead and two have recovered in a decompression chamber on Phuket after a volunteers' day out that went catastrophically wrong in the Similan islands today.

A Royal Thai Navy helicopter carried the two sick divers and the body of the third diver back to Phuket.






First reports said the two divers confined in the decompression chamber at Vachira Phuket Hospital in Phuket City were not in good shape.

The dead diver was named as Sudhat Sokpok, 45. The divers who required decompression were Suwat Julapong, a Professor at Prince of Songkhla University, and Royal Thai Navy Petty Officer First Class Patopong Japimai.

The two sick divers, initially bleeding from the mouth, were in the chamber in Phuket City for six hours and have now come out, a spokesperson for the hospital said tonight.

''We believe they will make a full recovery,'' she said.

It's reported that problems arose today when divers sought to shift a mooring buoy where the anchor had drifted to a depth of 42 metres - well beyond the limit of most amateur divers.

Scores of Thai and foreign divers are said to have joined a project that aimed to fix or replace buoys around the Similans, one of the favorite destinations for divers visiting Phuket and neighboring Phang Nga province.

The tragedy came as one group of volunteers tried to adjust buoys around Koh See (Island Four).

The man who died was a veteran Thai diver who has totted up between 500-600 dives. He was a businessman from Songkhla province.

One professional diver who spoke to Phuketwan tonight said that volunteers should not be used to adjust moorings at such depths.

''It appears to be a money-saving exercise on the part of the national park officials,'' he said. ''Professional divers should be employed to fix the moorings over a long period of time.

''Instead it has become a community project and clearly, people are being asked to dive beyond their capacity.''

Police from Phang Nga are investigating the death.

The Similans are well-known to thousands of snorkelling day trippers and liveaboard divers who usually stay on Phuket or in Khao Lak and reach the islands via Tablamu pier in Phang Nga.

 

[Yarbrough]

This is a sad thing, but it illustrates the reason that so many training agencies are now focusing on Public Safety Diving as a certification path, not just a career choice for open water divers anymore. Things that are relatively easy to do for someone with the proper training and planning can be catastrophic without those two elements. Here's to a full recovery by the two who can and condolences to the family and friend of the one who cannot.

 

[Basking Ridge Diver]

Not sure I understand -

PADI Public Safety Diver | PADI

I think of a Public Safety Diver as a fire / police type activity. Are you suggesting different?

 

[Wingy]

I personally cant see activities like this in Thailand becoming the preserve of Public Safety or even Commercial Divers - too much money to spend and would require government action. When a lot of thai dive ops do beach and ocean clean up days with project aware etc the thai government are unlikely to mandate restoration of mooring buoys etc when ''someone'' will do it for free.

 

[Yarbrough]

I was not saying that "Public Safety Divers" needed to be mandated to do this type of work, simply that throughout the years, jobs such as these have been done by untrained individuals and the training agencies are taking a more active role in correctly training the people who are working underwater in order to build the skill set needed to function in those environments. (Such as Public Safety Diving)

42 Meters is outside the range of recreational diving, therefore, more training is obviously needed, and the training path for PSD would have left the divers much more prepared to deal with the tasks they were trying to accomplish.

In all, my point was simply that the training agencies are already working to address problems like this thanks to the public safety world where just a few years ago, most of the people employed in the field had little more than a basic scuba certification.

 

[boulderjohn]

I think we have a terminology issue here. The training for the activity I know of as public safety diving is not appropriate to this kind of work. It is more of a commercial diving operation.

 

[Yarbrough]

Agreed, and I was not saying that the divers needed to be public safety. Just pointing out a parallel, PSD was done by amateurs and had a high mortality rate, recreational training agencies stepped in and addressed the issue.

Also, regardless of what you call the work, training for PSD will benefit anyone working in a marine environment, learning to operate in low viz, use tools underwater, dive search grids and the use of lift bags all could have helped prevent tragedy. Also, training in Deco Procedures would not have hurt since the operation was being conducted in 138 feet of water. I could also have talked about technical diving, but I thought that PSD ran a more parallel course to the incident here. I was just pointing out that the agencies out there are already trying to address and prevent needless injuries and fatalities.

 

[boulderjohn]

OK, I think we can all agree that people should not be doing this kind of work without the proper training, whatever the name for it might be.

 

[DENLASCUBA]

This is a sad thing to see happen to someone trying to help out in Thailand as the moorings being torn away are issues all season long. Even though he was an experienced diver thet national parks should have had prerequisites for this project, one to to be certified beyond recreational depths and trained in deco procedures. This area is quite deep and can have some wicked currents.

 

[KevinNM]

If the description in the press is accurate, it sounds like he became unresponsive at depth, with lots of gas left. This suggest medical issue or CO poisoning to me, but assuming the press is accurate is always a reach.