Article on Death In Ginnie Springs

[tomfcrist]

Dhboner, I think most of us get it. The issue is that this whole thread revolves around an article written national inquirer style as well as scubaboards local foil hat conspiracy theorists trying to make a mountain out of a mole hill.
Sometimes you just have to be realistic about what happened to a fellow diver or a friend(which you are).

 

[scagrotto]

A lesson to be taken from this is if your buddy refuses to analyze when you ask them to, don't dive with them.

That's a good rule that I'd think was obvious before this incident. I can understand a lot of divers being a bit complacent, but this involved a bunch of cave divers. People who should be thoroughly anal about things, because just one little thing going wrong may kill you.

I'm suggesting that if proper investigative procedures had been followed then we might have at least gained a valuable addition to the long history of accident analysis. Instead we gained nothing

I would humbly suggest that if you can't learn anything useful from past accidents without an investigation that meets the standards required for a criminal trial, you probably shouldn't be a cave diver.

 

[gianaameri]

No but you do take deco gas. And some like to use an 80 for that. It might be a language issue but you don't seem to understand that in his mind, Carlos was never wrong. He alienated a number of people with this attitude. He and some of his compatriots did what they wanted to do. You did not question their decisions or assertions.

So, he was arrogant (does not bother me and it is fairly common in the Tec Diving world).

Taking an Alu80 for deco is perfectly normal on a dive like the Andrea Doria - BUT IT WOULD NOT BE NORMAL TO FILL IT WITH AIR NOR WOULD IT BE NORMAL TO MARK IT AS O2 WHEN IT IS FILLED WITH AIR.

So, it was alleged in this respectable forum that Carlos filled an O2 marked tank with Air and did this for his Andrea Doria dive trip and then took the same tank on his fatal dive in Ginnie (but as we know for fact that tank was not filled with Air at all, but filled with O2, and properly marked as O2).

I call the above internet recount of alleged events by posters dubious or suspicious to say the least.

 

[Jim Lapenta]

Whatever dude. It is what he did. Took an o2 marked tank and filled it with air before heading to cave country. He had two of them marked o2. One was used on the Doria trip . it got used. He stated he was sure he filled it with air before heading to cave country. The other still had o2 in it. He was sure he knew which was which. No need for him to analyze. Remember he never made mistakes. This was reported by his dive buddies for that trip. If that sounds dubious or suspicious to you that's your problem to sort out.

 

[boulderjohn]

Taking an Alu80 for deco is perfectly normal on a dive like the Andrea Doria - BUT IT WOULD NOT BE NORMAL TO FILL IT WITH AIR NOR WOULD IT BE NORMAL TO MARK IT AS O2 WHEN IT IS FILLED WITH AIR.

Lots of people have tanks that they use for a variety of purposes, and lots of them have permanent markers on them. I am sitting about 20 feet away from two such tanks at this very moment. Right now neither one of them has a fill that matches the permanent marker. I have covered the permanent markers with white duct tape and written over them with magic marker. I have to do that a lot, and it is a bit of a pain. It would not be much of a stretch to say "screw it--I know what it is for this dive."

In fact, it happened to an extent the other day. Normally one of those AL40s has 50%, and the other has 100%. Over the last few dives, the mix has varied because of a combination of different factors, including the inability to get enough 100% into them. My buddy and I were able to get them topped off with 100% in anticipation of a cave dive in which we expected to have no more than a few minutes of deco. We were planning to leave the bottles by the cave entrance and pick them up at the end. We got them filled 5 minutes away from the dive site. When we analyzed, one of them came to 85% and the other came to 88%. We put little stickers on to remind us which was which, but we did not bother to cover the permanent markers! Horror!

We did the dive as anticipated, using only a fraction of the gas. So now I have the tanks sitting in a closet. Since I am no longer a 5 minute drive from the dive site, and since my next use for those tanks will likely be in open water, I went to the trouble of covering them up and putting the correct markings on them.

I have no trouble at all believing the story. It does not sound remotely implausible to me.

 

[gianaameri]

Whatever dude. It is what he did. Took an o2 marked tank and filled it with air before heading to cave country. He had two of them marked o2. One was used on the Doria trip . it got used. He stated he was sure he filled it with air before heading to cave country. The other still had o2 in it. He was sure he knew which was which. No need for him to analyze. Remember he never made mistakes. This was reported by his dive buddies for that trip. If that sounds dubious or suspicious to you that's your problem to sort out.

What I do not understand is exactly why he would have taken a deco tank filed with Air to the Andrea Doria trip.

No one would do that. You do not deco on Air on a trip like the Andrea Doria.

I am not condoning the fact the he and his team-mates failed to analyse that tank that day (when he died), I just do not understand why anyone would bring Air to an Andrea Doria trip to be used for deco.

Until there is an explanation for that, I am calling B.S. on everything being posted about Carlos on the internet.

 

[grf88]

What I do not understand is exactly why he would have taken a deco tank filed with Air to the Andrea Doria trip.

No one would do that. You do not deco on Air on a trip like the Andrea Doria.

I am not condoning the fact the he and his team-mates failed to analyse that tank that day (when he died), I just do not understand why anyone would bring Air to an Andrea Doria trip to be used for deco.

Until there is an explanation for that, I am calling B.S. on everything being posted about Carlos on the internet.

Re-read Jim Lapenta's last post, it should clarify it for you. He took two tanks with O2 to the Doria and used one, the other he did not use. The one he used was then filled with air for the cave trip so he now had two tanks marked with O2 one of which was now filled with air. He took one of those tanks to the caves thinking it was the one filled with air. He was wrong.

I have no first hand knowledge but that is what I read in Jim Lapenta's post.

 

[Patrick999]

I am not a technical diver and I am a very beginner to cave diving, but I always thought that gas with higher then 40% oxygen require oxygen clean tanks and regulators. I also was of the opinion that this would prohibit filling such tanks with air. The community discussing in this thread does not seem to consider this as an issue. Am I wrong or is the above norm an european one only?
Thanks
Patrick

 

[tomfcrist]

I am not a technical diver and I am a very beginner to cave diving, but I always thought that gas with higher then 40% oxygen require oxygen clean tanks and regulators. I also was of the opinion that this would prohibit filling such tanks with air. The community discussing in this thread does not seem to consider this as an issue. Am I wrong or is the above norm an european one only?
Thanks
Patrick

As long as the air is oxygen compatible, there is no issue putting air in a nitrox tank.....well except the misidentification issue that happened here.

 

[Redshift]

I am not a technical diver and I am a very beginner to cave diving, but I always thought that gas with higher then 40% oxygen require oxygen clean tanks and regulators. I also was of the opinion that this would prohibit filling such tanks with air. The community discussing in this thread does not seem to consider this as an issue. Am I wrong or is the above norm an european one only?
Thanks
Patrick

It does require tanks in oxygen service, but it's not a problem to use them for air, as long as it's of suficient quality. And notice that unless you are using 100% oxygen or heliox, then there will always be some air going to the tank.
That was a stupid and annoying European (German) law with no sense at all that just pisses me off, gives us more trouble and doesn't change safety at all.