Recent Fatalities - Accident Analysis

[The Iceni]

Can I add my contribution to this thread?

I recently returned to diving because I now have the time and the money. I used to be a very active diver with nearly 1,000 dives but stopped when I went to medical school as a mature student, too many year ago. I suppose at the age of 50 I am a prime candidate to have a fatal heart attack as my first symtom of heart disease - sudden cardiac death - but I have no family history of ischaemic heart disease and still keep myself reasonably fit. Sadly there is no effective screening for silent heart disease.

I find the net invaluable and contribute to this forum in order to learn and must say I am gratfied that, as an interloper from across the water, I feel I am made very welcome by the moderators and members and have had no derogatory replies to my sometimes naive posts. At least I try to be honest and do not mind getting it wrong now and again and have learned a great deal from this forum, and continue to do so. Sadly the same cannot be said for other fora.

I was a little surpised to read the comments about the Empress of Ireland. Almost all the decent wreck diving we do in the North Sea is in conditions described and we are certainly not professionals.

I agree that the true medical cause of death is often incorrect in diving related deaths. When a diver runs out of air in an overhead environment one can be reasonably confident that the true medical cause of death was "drowning" but I worry that, in England at least, DCI is too often quoted as the medical cause of death simply because the victim was a diver. As I have posted elsewhere there are likely to be many artefactual injuries in diver related deaths, for example when a divers body is recovered it will not be subjected to any effective form of decompression, so bubbles are likely to be found in the tissues, whether they were there in life or not.

If divers do not discuss incidents dispassionately, openly and honestly we cannot learn from them. It is a shame we are never privy to fuller details.

In my opinion there is nothing wose than ignorance and a closed mind.

As jbd. "For me it means no rebreather at this time since I don't understand what can make them fail. " There are too many unexplained rebreather deaths for me also to feel comfortable with the current state of knowledge of rebreathers and rebreather diving. I do not envy the coroner since he will have so little evidence to make an accurate assessment. For example he has no way of determining whether the initial event in a rebreather death was hypoxia or acute CNS oxygen toxicity even if the intial event was witnessed.

 

[KZMAN]

O-ring once bubbled...
From the Montreal papers and talking to the outfitter I got the skinny on what happened on the Empress of Ireland this past Sunday (August 4). Serge Cournoyer, 33, of Sainte-Anne-de-Sorel drowned while during a penetration of the Empress. He was said to have 10 years of diving experience and knew the Empress well.

Cournoyer got separated from his dive buddy and did not surface at his appointed time. A quick search was mounted by divers there on the scene without any success. The Canadian Coast Guard was notified and they called in local diver Danny Cyr. Cyr is a very experienced Empress diver. He found him in an aft cargo hold. The hold is hard to enter but opens up once inside. Siltouts are to be expected inside the wreck. Cournoyer did not run a line. His tanks were empty. Divers in Canada like in the NE USA now inspect equipment having long given up hope that authorities will make determinations on cause of death. Cournoyer was wearing double tanks (no manifold) and when regs were purged no air was in them. The poor bastard sucked them dry.

Cournoyer was the fourth diver to drown on the Empress in the last 10 years.

Another one: Despite the rising death toll, scuba divers can't
resist the sunken remains of the Empress of Ireland, a master dive instructor said yesterday. The site, in the waters just off Sainte-Luce-sur-Mer near Rimouski, is as dramatic as it is dangerous, Dan Foster, manager of the Pointe Claire dive shop Action Scuba, said in an interview. The drowning Sunday of another diver will not affect his plans to tour the Empress this summer, Foster said.

Serge Cournoyer, 33, of Sainte-Anne-de-Sorel, the diver who drowned Sunday, was said to have 10 years experience. He was the fourth diver to drown there in the last 10 years. Coroner Jean-François Dorval, who is to investigate Cournoyer's death, has yet to report on the death of Pierre Lepage, a diver who drowned at the site in June 2001. Lepage had about 100 dives under his belt.
The coroner said bad weather was a factor in the 1996 drowning of two divers who had almost 200 dives each.

Foster, who has done about 2,000 dives and is a master scuba dive trainer, said that even experienced divers should wait for near perfect conditions before attempting to visit the Empress.
The depth of the wreck, the extremely cold water, strong currents and variable visibility make it a demanding dive, said Foster, who knows the particulars of the site because of its fame, his desire to go there and the fact that many of his friends have dived
there.

"It is well beyond the recreational levels of scuba diving," he said.
Divers can first touch the wreck at about 90 feet but the depth of the wreck extends below 130 feet, he said. Flat tide - between tides, a window of up to about 120 minutes a day - is the best time to dive because currents are strong during changing tides, he said. The Empress of Ireland, a luxury liner rivaling the Titanic, was heading from Liverpool in May 1914 when it collided with another ship in a heavy fog. The liner sank in less than 15 minutes, killing 1,014 passengers and crew.

Hello McFly,......... Wake Up, Pay Attention!!! It takes Experience, and near perfect conditions.!!!! On this particular dive site.... Which I now want to try.... Obviously with good conditions!

 

[The Iceni]

KZMAN once bubbled...
It takes Experience, and near perfect conditions.!!!! On this particular dive site.... Which I now want to try.... Obviously with good conditions!

And good planning, I hope. One of the fundamental rules of North Sea diving is, as stated above, to plan to dive during slack water and to be prepared to abandon the dive if the conditions are not near-perfect.

I (we) may not be professionals but I hope we all try to behave professionally, with meticulous planning in order to reduce the risks of any incident. After all "prevention is always much better that any cure".

Sadly this often means a weekend's diving is cancelled at the last minute.

 

[Rick Murchison]

Dr Paul Thomas once bubbled...
Sadly this often means a weekend's diving is cancelled at the last minute.

Several years ago, 1996 I think it was, we made five trips in a row to the Gulf where we cancelled because of unforecast weather and/or sea conditions at the last minute. I'd put the average direct cost of those trips - fuel, food & lodging - at around a thousand dollars per person (for all five trips, not each one), even after the dive shop reimbursed us for the boat fees and rental fees.
The mark of the real diver? The ones who made the sixth trip.
Smiling.
Rick

 

[O-ring]

Sadly this often means a weekend's diving is cancelled at the last minute.

We got blown out on our first day in NC last weekend...

 

[The Iceni]

Rick Murchison once bubbled...
The mark of the real diver? The ones who made the sixth trip.
Smiling.
Rick

After a very doubtful start this year, following an hour on the Kylemore (28M) and another hour on The New Leeds I think anyone could see the remnants of my grin at 1,000 yards.

The important thing to me is being adult enough to know when call the dive off, even if this at the last minute when you arrive at the dive site after several hours on the boat, with mad keen divers determined to get wet at all costs.

The wrecks/sites aren't going anywhere and there is always another day as that weekend proved. If I do not dive again this year that weekend made all the hassle worthwhile. I will remember it as some of the best diving I have ever done.

The last time we tried those dives the charter boat's engine blew up and we had to towed back by the laid-back lifesavers of the Cromer life boat. I was beginning to think that, for me at least, Murphy's law applied; If it can go wrong it will!

Pick any one from five; weather, visability, equipment, boat, buddy.

(one more for luck!)

 

[CuriousMe]

neve once bubbled...
My report was meant to inform scubaboarders of the accident and not to inititate discussions about dive-related deaths.

I specifically choose not to discuss what-could-have-been and the things he had done wrong on that fateful day, simply out of respect for his family and friends. I hope you guys can understand this and can spare him the analytical dissection of events leading to his death.

I'd really appreciate it if further discussions about dive-related deaths as well as the pros and cons of solo diving/rebreathers are not based on that piece I wrote.

Thanks again and I wish you all a good day.

Neve, I think everybody on this board mourns and feels for the families of victims we read about. But I do disagree with you on one point....I think the best way to show respect is to learn anything possible from what happened. If we can learn what may have contributed to (not necessarily caused) this gentleman's death, it might help someone else live. I can't think of a better way of showing respect.