GDI:
I hate assumptions and I can only imagine the possible fallout that may come of this. I will will pray for the family. The report (IUCRR) will not answer the questions that many of you have at this time. The police I am sure will investigate as they do for any such accident and from that a report may come and policy's may change. For now just think about it to yourself and as far as a public forum is concerned let it go short of passing on your condolences to family.
Then what exactly is the point of this forum?
The only way a dive community will ever do anything about this sort of incident is if they talk about it. There is a way to do it. State the facts as they are known and discuss them.
If any of you have actually read Sheck Exley's Blueprint for Survival, the genesis of Cave Diving Accident Analysis, you will know that finding out what went wrong isn't just about determining if there is some "unfortunate bad luck" or some blameless circumstances. It's also about assigning blame if there is blame to assign. UWS had an excellent article in it entitled "BEYOND MAXIMUM STUPID" back in the early 90's that described a dive in which two divers did a sidemount dive using one cylinder, one set of fins and weights and monofilament line. They were found OOA and wrapped like a fly in a spider web inside the cave. There was a graphic in that article, a drawing of a meter, a "stupidometer." The two highest settings were "dead meat" and "beyond maximum stupid."
I'm not saying that the deceased was stupid here. He was a student no doubt following the guidance and "wisdom" of his instructor. When I was a cavern diver in 1990 I idealized my instructor. I might have done whatever he said was OK to do. That comes with the territory. After all, I was following him into a water-filled cave, how much more dumb could I be? It's why OW students follow their non-cave instructors into water-filled caves and die even though their manual and the test they took clearly says not to.
I'm just so sick of reading about these completely pointless deaths, deep on air, solo, uncertified cave, diving beyond your level of competence, experience and training. Someone, somewhere along the way has to be responsible for some of these. People make bad decisions, sometimes criminally bad decisions. These are not all just "accidents" and it's time we stopped tippy-toeing around it, especially in a forum entitled "Accidents and Incidents." Sometimes it is a series of unfortunate events, something missed, but even those have a cause, a chain of events that lead to the fatal moment.
I've heard other times that the "report will be released" that will answer everything and then you never hear another word. Maybe it did get published . . . somewhere. On the positive side, the IUCRR (
www.iucrr.org) has published 20 reports. Since 1950, if Bozanic's study is correct, there have been nearly 500 deaths up to 1998. I can glean back issues of UWS and find more than that number of 20. I'd like to see them do more. I'm not faulting the IUCRR. I respected Henry Nicholson tremdendously and liked him personally. But I'd like to see every accident report be published. Every cause and what led up to it, because I know that the one document that had the greatest impact on me as a cave diver was Exley's little Blue Book.
He said he got the idea from graphic, horrible photos of accidents posted at a rest stop to shock motorists into slowing down. It worked, on Sheck and on me. I followed the rules to the best of my ability and I always wondered, "have I ever read anything like this on an accident report"? And so I always dived conservatively. I haven't run much new line, no, but I've done some great dives to some virgin and almost virgin places because I always tried to keep those lessons in mind.
I always wonder how many lives might be saved if, all these years, the CDS and the NACD and the IUCRR had been publishing every accident in detail like the ones in Sheck's book. Has anyone? If so, I'd love to know where it is. I read a lot of these reports in the early UWS' and I have always thought that if there were a searchable database of accident reports published online minus names, but with accurate details, then there'd be more divers who'd say, "Wow, I've done THAT before!" and maybe they'd be alive now.
They exist, all those reports. And the more they are talked about and passed around and made a part of fabric of tech diving instead of the "I scootered to the Hinkle on my 50th cave dive -- and survived!!!" BS, the fewer divers would be dead. Cave Diving is macho enough, let's let a little reason and temperance seep back in.
There will always be bad judgement, but self-censoring is not the answer. So long as the discussion is as factual as possible, devoid of profanity and on point, you can't do wrong in a forum dedicated to discussing accidents. I don't believe that victims families really belong here. Not if they will be hurt by discussion of their loved ones. There are better places to be right now. I'd suggest that they ask someone to keep them posted on events. Certainly that newpaper article was a lot more graphic than anything said here thus far. This forum should have a disclaimer, "Graphic discussions of diving accidents. Do not enter if you find such discussions disturbing." If PBS can do it and discuss and show horrible events on television that is beamed passively into the living rooms of millions, surely a forum entitled "Accidents and Incidents" can do as well.
But then it's not my forum. But it is my sport. So if you're going to discuss accidents then do it, otherwise, call it the Empathy Forum or the Condolences Room. But if doing anything but offering condolences is in bad taste, then this isn't an Accidents Forum. Or so I think . . . .
JoeL