Children die playing with scuba gear left in pool - Jensen Beach, Florida

[RayfromTX]

I definitely wouldn't jump straight to it being the gas mix that caused two children to drown together. That seems like one of the more unlikely scenarios.

I see as more likely, that one of the kids went down and put the reg in their mouth but inhaled a bit of water and choked on it setting up a cascade where one accidental drowning turned into two when the other child tried to save them and panicked, leading to the second drowning. Having experience on scuba would make this more possible because scuba helps us overcome the fear of breathing in while in a water environment but if you take a big inhale and it is wet, you can inhale water and start violently coughing. Heck, I can cough on the saliva produced by a cough drop or on a sip of water if I'm not paying attention.

Then there is the issue of horseplay and children failing to recognize the seriousness of what they are doing.

I suspect the autopsy will be helpful but we may never hear those results.

 

[johndiver999]

Perhaps they really were reasonably skilled divers and they were buddy breathing and sharing a single second stage? One might fall asleep initially and the other was so close behind that the problems was not recognized or misinterpreted by the other child as "playing"?

Leaving a 7-yr old for 10 minutes in a pool with a scuba tank is hard to comprehend.

Not so long ago, I was at a birthday party for a 1-yr old. Everyone was inside (maybe 12-15 people) and I look outside and two 5-yr old boys are running around the pool deck, jumping in the water and one of them could barely swim. I was outside in an instant and watched them for several minutes - I was curious if any of the boys (4) parents would soon realize the situation and come out. Nope..I finally went inside and scolded a few of the parents - telling them the situation was entirely unacceptable. This stuff scares the hell out of me.

Years ago, a different neighbor lost his child to drowning in his pool and I could hear the father screaming and wailing as the EMT's worked unsuccessfully on the young boy. They ended up filling in the pool and eventually sold the house.

The father had been cutting the grass and his one older (mentally handicaped child) opened a locked gate allowing his other son of 3-4 years to find his way into the backyard pool, while the father cut grass in the front.

 

[Belzelbub]

Not as simple as it sounds because a common assumption in the community is that unlabeled tanks contain AIR (i.e. 21%). But at Fill Express we saw a great many tanks containing something other than AIR we were certain had previously been properly labeled yet were presented for filling with no label (sometimes removed by well meaning individuals or inadvertently scraped off during handling or obscured due to immersion; there were a great many explanations for the absence of a label on tank following diving.)

If all you dive is air, then having them unlabeled is common, and very little risk. If you have tanks with various other mixes around, then labeling all of them is a good idea, especially if some of them might contain trimix.

The only unlabeled tanks I dive are the ones I use at the aquarium. They are all filled by an on-site compressor, so air is the only option. No banks of He, O2, Ar, or anything else available.

The only time my tanks are unlabeled is when I take them in to get filled, and that only lasts until I pick them up and analyze them.

 

[Marie13]

While this terrible event deserves our empathy... what it does not deserve is a discussion of blame, given so little information about the circumstances. Police reports and subsequent news reporting of diving related accidents are notoriously unreliable in their details. The children were raised on a farm by parents, and even their grandmother, who are well known to the community as experienced divers. Dive shops routinely host "bubble blowing" pool events for children in this age range. Since they were visitors where the accident occurred, it's possible that the cylinder and regulator were provided by someone other than the parent. Technical diving history is filled with many accidents by exceptionally experienced divers related to breathing gas mixture errors in labelling and switching. Few divers would be aware that, compared to an adult, children are at increased risk for rapid oxygen desaturation leading to hypoxia as a result of higher metabolism and lower residual oxygen storage capacity. What multi-tasking parent hasn't had the experience of having their attention distracted from their children for "just a moment", or relied upon one child to watch the other?

Their family will endure this burden forever, I see no point adding to their pain.

I’m seeing very little blame laid here. Are you going to police FB, too? The comments I saw on one article were quite bad.

 

[Belzelbub]

I definitely wouldn't jump straight to it being the gas mix that caused two children to drown together. That seems like one of the more unlikely scenarios.

That scenario was stated by the Sheriff’s Office. This seems like an easy thing to confirm. It shouldn’t take that long to analyze the gas, and something seems to have led them to the hypothesis that He was in the mix.

I don’t use He, but a hypoxic mix can definitely lead to this at very shallow depths. There was an incident I read about a few years ago where a guy tried out a CCR in a pool, and ended up the same.

Air or EAN wouldn’t cause this, but a deep mix could certainly, especially since it affected both children. Accidental water inspiration would be more likely if only one of the children had died. Especially if the kids were as competent in the water as was reported.

 

[stuartv]

Not as simple as it sounds because a common assumption in the community is that unlabeled tanks contain AIR (i.e. 21%). But at Fill Express we saw a great many tanks containing something other than AIR we were certain had previously been properly labeled yet were presented for filling with no label (sometimes removed by well meaning individuals or inadvertently scraped off during handling or obscured due to immersion; there were a great many explanations for the absence of a label on tank following diving.)

From the outset of Fill Express, EVERY tank was analyzed and labeled before leaving the premises including cylinders filled with AIR. (Plenty of customers were annoyed by having to analyze AIR fills, objecting that it was a pointless time waster.) Unheard of at the time, but as gases other than air have become commonplace in diving should we now always assume any tank missing an analysis label contains an unknown gas rather than air?

To ME, an unlabeled tank is an Unknown tank. I would not assume it was Air any more than I would assume it's pure O2. I have posted here on SB in the past regarding my opinion that even tanks ostensibly filled with Air should be analyzed (and labeled, of course). I have personally witnessed a shop fill station that somebody screwed up by opening the wrong banks at the wrong time and contaminated the "air" bank with Nitrox.

After I use a tank of BO or deco gas at all, so that I know it needs to be filled before my next use, I will often remove the label. That ensures that I won't use it again without analyzing it (which includes checking the pressure), and I won't fill it, either, without analyzing what's in it again (including the pressure).

I definitely wouldn't jump straight to it being the gas mix that caused two children to drown together. That seems like one of the more unlikely scenarios.

This article:

https://www.wptv.com/news/region-ma...ssible-drowning-incident-at-jensen-beach-home

Says this:

""It's looking like the children were not breathing the oxygen they believe they were breathing. It looks like they were indeed breathing helium. With helium, they would have the sense that they were actually breathing oxygen, so they would feel like they're breathing normally," said Major John Budensiek with the Martin County Sheriff's Office."

 

[doctormike]

Yeah, I mean, I guess the autopsy will shed some light on this, but based on what I have read so far, it sounds like hypoxic trimix is a likely culprit (the police have already talked about helium).

Both kids found on the bottom. Yes, pool drownings do happen, but a 9 year old isn't a 2 year old.

People always bring up the possibility of barotrauma and AGE with pool/scuba/kid stories, but that certainly doesn't fit the scenario for even one child, let alone two. It's not that AGE is impossible in a pool, but it would have to be a pretty big bubble to cause instant death and sinking for one child. For that to happen to two children independently seems very unlikely.

The last article that I read said that the police said that they were "breathing helium". I wouldn't take that as evidence that they somehow were breathing 100% helium, more likely that a non-diver used "helium" to mean trimix. While I suppose that someone blending gas might have pure He in a tank, wouldn't that be a big T bottle or something? I have no idea, I don't do this.

I'm not hypoxic trimix trained either, but I understand that 10/50 is a common mix, and 10/70 is one of the GUE standard mixes, that a diver might have in a tank. At 9 feet that's a PPO2 of 0.127, not compatible with life. People becoming hypoxic like that typically just go to sleep, rather than panicking and struggling that you might see with the other gas delivery scenarios discussed.

Yes, they clearly weren't trained divers, no matter what their prior experience was. But I find it hard to believe that they both would have died if the tank was filled with air.

 

[CT-Rich]

Deleted

 

[Marie13]

I haven’t read the entire thread, but my guess is it was a recreational rig. With two regulators both kids could breath off of it at the same time. If one child aspirated water and freaked out, his sibling would only be a few feet away, turning it into a double drowning. It is unlikely that a tech diver would set up a hypoxic mix to test his gear out in a pool, because it would end up wit a dead adult at the bottom of the pool. If it was CO contamination severe enough to kill two children in short order (how long do you expect a 7 &9 year old to be engaged by a scuba tank in a pool?) we would probably have heard about someone else getting sick.

It may turn out it was a double drowning and the presence of the tank played no role at all. One of the kids fell, was hurt and in the pool and his sibling tried to save him and also drowned. The simplistic explanation is often the most likely.

My heart goes out to the parents for all the pain and guilt they must be feeling.

Did you read any of the articles? The sheriff’s department is saying helium was in the tank the kids were breathing from. The kids asked permission to use a tank in the pool, an adult put a tank in the pool, and the kids went in after it. They had played in this pool with scuba gear before, per the article. The two second stages was just some speculation by another poster.

 

[boulderjohn]

Hi @John the Pom , this is the first time I heard of CAGE, and since I cannot open the article you linked (only the abstract is available) and I didn't manage to find explanations on the internet, I was wondering whether you could provide some info:
- What is the difference between CAGE and other kinds of AGE?
- When specifically do you develop CAGE?

CAGE is AGE in a specific location.

The last article that I read said that the police said that they were "breathing helium". I wouldn't take that as evidence that they somehow were breathing 100% helium, more likely that a non-diver used "helium" to mean trimix. While I suppose that someone blending gas might have pure He in a tank, wouldn't that be a big T bottle or something? I have no idea, I don't do this.

I rent my helium in big T-bottles. It is very expensive. So is the daily tank rental. When I have finished a dive trip and have helium left over, I will fill a regular tank with it so I am not paying rent until the next trip. I will, of course, label it when I do, since I will be using it for mixing when I am preparing for the next trip. I have a booster that makes this possible. I would guess that it is an unusual circumstance--there can't be many people in that position.

A mix of 10/50 or 10/70 is normally only used for diving when you are getting down to the 90m/300 foot range. That is a seriously hypoxic mix.