Lost Diver at Mill Pond Rescued

[bamafan]

Well at least you want be in any more movies anytime soon. Glad it all worked out and everyone is okay. Hopefully we all can learn something from these incidents. I know it makes me stop and think.

 

[Kevin Carlisle]

Interview after 7pm on www.wwbm.com should shed more light on it.

 

[ScubaSteve]

Interview after 7pm on www.wwbm.com should shed more light on it.

Bad domain....it does not exist.....enter it without the leading WWW

 

[Kevin Carlisle]

Bad domain....it does not exist.....enter it without the leading WWW

OOPS, WMBB.com is the link.

 

[Jim Lapenta]

Me scared of cave diving? Nah, I don't do it cause Edd is just too big to fit in my drysuit pocket.

Seriously though. I have been invited by a couple people to do cavern and cave training and it's just not my thing. Maybe it's the way my mind works but as soon as I read the description of the diver in an air pocket waiting to die I could clearly see it in my mind. I don't get those same images about wrecks. I have nothing but respect for all of you who do these dives safely. Keep doing them that way. Please.

 

[DA Aquamaster]

Go back to where you were stuck and barely got out of? Those lines over there are now broken, I would like to see you do that. How about put both ends of the jump in so you are covered? How about know where you are? Following training would prevent this. I dont consider him doing other jumps, he was looking for a way out, not knowing the cave he kept finding jumps. When this area gets silted out, it is very much ZERO viz. I think he was on his own line where edd found him.

That's the point - stop digging the hole deeper when you find yourself starting to get stuck/or getting in something tighter than you expected, not after.

Taking it a few steps farther back, putting down the shovel before you dig a hole you can't get out of has to start with a healthy and realistic self assessment of your abilities, then turning the dive before you exceeed them.

Placing both jumps before you start so you are on continuous line on either side of a restriction is fine - except it is still unverified line. That's doubly bad if you never even been down the line before and have no knowledge of or clue how to navigate any intervening jumps or tees, or even know whether you can fit through other restriction on the line. The shovel should have been put down here as well.

At a minimum, stop and turn the dive as soon as you begin to suspect you are not where you think you want to be. If that means going back through a snug restriction, that would still be my first choice, lacking all of the information the diver seemed to lack. Going farther down a line that you don't even know leads out is just making a bad situation even worse. Getting back through the restriction may be difficult, but it is at least the devil I already know.

If I break a line I'm either going to immediately fix it before proceeding further, or I'm going to turn the dive if a lone repair is not an option. If the line snaps back and I lose the exit side, I'm going to find the ends, or at least the exit side and either repair it or exit as needed. I'm not going to start running my own line for any purpose other than tying off and finding the broken end of the line leading out. Based on what I am hearing, that's another point where the shovel needed to be put down rather than going deeper in the cave.

This incident did not happen due to a single event, but rather was the result of a series of mistakes and bad decisions. Stopping that chain of events is exactly what Marci means when she says he should have "quit digging".

 

[Kevin Carlisle]

You are going to fix line in zero viz? I bet you do lol. Im sure that guy had a plan just like you. If he put the other reel in, Edd would not have been needed. This is not a complex traverse, its a freakin jump. And sadly that rule was not followed, case closed. If you look at my first posts, you will see I mentioned the situational awareness wasn't there or all of them would have stopped.

 

[Jax]

I'm having trouble following this, too. Am I reading correctly that the diver put in a jump, moved forward through a restriction where he almost got stuck, and then tried to find a route back that would avoid having to go back through that restriction?

+1 on this . . .

The line Which line? ends on a rock and it's 25ft or so away from the gold line, gold line being 90 degrees to your right. They never run that line, problem number 1, they try to run the line which line? in zero viz, find a different line which goes into even smaller stuff. That line was broken yesterday and has to be repaired. Bad judgements lead to all this.

Was this some kind of circuit? They put in the initial jump to the ?? line but thought they could just do a visual at the end of the jump to the gold line?

Sorry for all this basic stuff . . .

 

[j2s]

I'm hoping a few details come out in this incident. I am in no way trying to put the rescued diver down in any way, but just more curious. It was said that it was a navigational error. I am not familiar with that particular passage, but does it not have a line in it? Or did the divers not run a line with them? Even in a navigational error, shouldn't there still be a continuous guideline. It is very basic cave diver training to know how to follow a guideline back out,... even in 0 vis,.... unless the diver was stuck &/ or unable to find his way back out of a tight spot. Also curious,... where was the diver's buddy? Did he have one? If he did have one, how did he get out & the other diver not? Who reported the diver as lost? How did they know he was lost? Thank goodness, once again, Edd was able to snatch another diver from the grip of the Reaper. I have only dove JB about 7- 8 times, mostly on the main line, so can not say that I am extremely familiar with the system. I want to better understand it. Like I said, I mean nothing bad towards the rescued diver, just seems to be a bunch of holes in the details of what happened.

Reel work, reel work, reel work........It's not rocket science !!!!!.......

 

[tstormdiver]

Reel work, reel work, reel work........It's not rocket science !!!!!.......

Believe you me,.... I do use my reels.