Virginian diver dead at 190 feet - Roaring River State Park, Missouri

[Johnnycannuk]

Did the extant SOP dictate MOD formula (i.e. what max ppO2 at MOD) and minimum END (including formula - i.e. O2 is or is not narcotic) allowed?

In other words, was diving EAN26 (or even 24) an actual violation of the existing, documented SOP at the time? Or was it just a violation of accepted best practices?

Well that's the real issue I suspect. A little normalization of deviance perhaps allowed the SOP to not be matching best practices with gas management. And this is not the first time that a person on that team was at 190+ ft with an inappropriate gas for the depth....

 

[telemonster]

Is this another case that if the Shearwater controllers had a vibrate or beeping function when "in red" then this incident might of been avoided? The old Hammerhead and other old CCR controllers had this simple feature, never understood why Shearwater left this out until the recent most models. Patent issues?

 

[kierentec]

Is this another case that if the Shearwater controllers had a vibrate or beeping function when "in red" then this incident might of been avoided? The old Hammerhead and other old CCR controllers had this simple feature, never understood why Shearwater left this out until the recent most models. Patent issues?

I think part of the delay was probably due to power supply issues. The HH electronics were notorious for shutting down and (usually) rebooting when the DIVA would vibrate (also, juergenson marine has a patent on their vibrating HUD and don't allow other manufacturers to implement it into their HUDs). The new Petrel will only vibrate when using lithium batteries. However, it's likely this diver knew his PO2 was too high, but was just too narc'd and hypercapnic to respond properly. All the warnings in the world won't help if your neuron's are too stopped up with narcotic gasses to transmit info to respond.

 

[formernuke]

Should have known O2 was to high during the dive planning and getting the tanks filled stage.

 

[inquis]

Is this another case that if the Shearwater controllers had a vibrate or beeping function when "in red" then this incident might of been avoided?

I doubt it. He was using a Nerd, and the red flashing is tough to miss. The above mentioned narcosis is likely the critical factor. (ETA: aside from thinking he had EAN24 and still doing the dive).

 

[lermontov]

After dropping off the bottles at 70' and then resurfacing the victim left with the second set of bottles at 1120 hours. It appears the victim knew something was wrong immediately after he dropped off the bottles at 190' at 1125 hours. Thats only 5 minutes!

It took 5 min to get to 190' -with 26% (instead of what he thought was 24%) you still only at ppo2 of 1.4 at 140' At that descent rate (38' per minute) its only just over one minute beyond that to 190' so were talking about an incredibly small amount of time at beyond a ppo2 of 1.4

the only conclusion i can see is that he was was injecting o2 thinking it was dil -likley narcosis issues played a big part, so his ppo2 was a lot higher for longer but even so it was still only 5 minutes

I wonder if a gag strap and a BOV would have saved him -he pulled his loop out and his body still had his BO reg still in his mouth whether his buddy did that or the victim did is unclear

Im also wondering if they (he) wanted to minimise deco obligations by keeping he 02 levels high (hence 24%) and helium penalty nil and thus reducing the logistics of staging deco gas for future runs, it seems it was planned as a bounce dive to stage gas rather than planned exploration dive

 

[John the Pom]

The official NSS report just released.

Accident Analysis - NSS CDS

nsscds.org

Even if a person has a high PP02 tolerance, it can change due to various factors. One of my instructors was a former Navy diver. He had suffered hypothermia during a mission and was put on limited duties for a couple of weeks. On his return to duty, he suffered a seizure when using an oxygen rebreather on a shallow dive that he had done many times before. In other words, just because you got away with pushing the envelope up to now doesn't mean you'll get away with it the next time.

 

[tursiops]

just because you got away with pushing the envelope up to now doesn't mean you'll get away with it the next time.

^^^THIS^^^

 

[Johnnycannuk]

Gareth Locke has an analysis here that is quite good: An HF perspective of the Roaring River Fatality

I pointed him to the video from Gus on Facebook too, as he seemed not to be aware of it.

I honestly hope this makes things better. And for all the grief we gave him here, I am glad Gus talked about his near miss as it is informative (staying with Just Culture)

 

[formernuke]

KISS divers correct me if I'm wrong here but my understanding of how a kiss works is there is a constant flow or needle valve that constantly feeds oxygen into the loop. This valve is set to (hopefully) match the rate in which the diver uses the oxygen so it's being replaced and the diver breaths and the CO2 is scrubbed out. So if the diluent gas exceeds MOD for the dive it is worse because of the constant flow of gas into the loop.

So I'm wondering if the PPO2 of the diluent was 1.8 wouldn't the loop PPO2 be higher? Possibly much higher because of the constant O2 flow?