Rred
Contributor
If someone could break out the actual costs of operating a chamber, even a 1-man chamber, 24x7, it might change the tone of discussion.
I'll make a WAG that having three 2-man crews (one operator, one physician) plus a fourth crew to cover vacations and weekends means...what, four docs with specialty accredation? $120,000 each per year? And the four operators, can they be had for $60k each? So, that's a fast $720,000 per year just to staff it. Add the equipment, maintenance...wait, maybe you need to double all that to accommodate a dive buddy (divers get hurt in pairs?) or just to have one chamber up when the other is down for maintenance? And a facility, and gobs of power, and climate control and lights and all those good things...
So how many local divers need to contribute, what? ten bucks per fill, collected at the shop? Or $25 a head, collected on the boat? What's it take to fund a million and a half dollars per year, just to keep one handy local chamber open? (Maybe someone can give us the real numbers?)
It may not be convenient but all of a sudden, that occasional $50,000 helo ride doesn't seem like an entirely ridiculous way to do it.
And you can't really scold the Navy, in this day and age, from being a little reluctant to grant 24x7 open access to potentially critical equipment inside a secured base.
This is not just a diving problem. Every time you hear about a bus going off the road in Columbia or Venezuela full of US cruise line tourists, you know where they go for treatment? To the nearest Class1 emergency room. Which is usually Miami-Jackson, Ryder Trauma, back across the waters to Florida. The LifeFlights are more feasible than building local facilities.
I'll make a WAG that having three 2-man crews (one operator, one physician) plus a fourth crew to cover vacations and weekends means...what, four docs with specialty accredation? $120,000 each per year? And the four operators, can they be had for $60k each? So, that's a fast $720,000 per year just to staff it. Add the equipment, maintenance...wait, maybe you need to double all that to accommodate a dive buddy (divers get hurt in pairs?) or just to have one chamber up when the other is down for maintenance? And a facility, and gobs of power, and climate control and lights and all those good things...
So how many local divers need to contribute, what? ten bucks per fill, collected at the shop? Or $25 a head, collected on the boat? What's it take to fund a million and a half dollars per year, just to keep one handy local chamber open? (Maybe someone can give us the real numbers?)
It may not be convenient but all of a sudden, that occasional $50,000 helo ride doesn't seem like an entirely ridiculous way to do it.
And you can't really scold the Navy, in this day and age, from being a little reluctant to grant 24x7 open access to potentially critical equipment inside a secured base.
This is not just a diving problem. Every time you hear about a bus going off the road in Columbia or Venezuela full of US cruise line tourists, you know where they go for treatment? To the nearest Class1 emergency room. Which is usually Miami-Jackson, Ryder Trauma, back across the waters to Florida. The LifeFlights are more feasible than building local facilities.