Diver Missing At Cove 2 (11am Today 2/19)

[fnerg]

Was Joanna one of the first team that found the body? I'm in the same dive club she is and I'm a little worried about the person who went to the chamber. I hope tragedy isn't compounded.

It's good that you were around to do all this.

[lamont]

Thanks Lamont -- I'm sure it wasn't easy, but now perhaps the family and friends can have some closure.

I also hear from Laura that the bag made it a 3 minute dive for the dive team and they really appreciated it, which gives me some warm fuzzies that we helped them stay safe and get home to their families a little earlier tonight...

[lamont]

Was Joanna one of the first team that found the body? I'm in the same dive club she is and I'm a little worried about the person who went to the chamber. I hope tragedy isn't compounded.

It's good that you were around to do all this.

I hope not, but that diver was conscious when taken to the chamber, and I believe they are being treated right now. Hoping it was mostly anxiety/stress and the chamber ride is just precautionary...

[coach_izzy]

Thanks Lamont -- I'm sure it wasn't easy, but now perhaps the family and friends can have some closure.

I also hear from Laura that the bag made it a 3 minute dive for the dive team and they really appreciated it, which gives me some warm fuzzies that we helped them stay safe and get home to their families a little earlier tonight...

Respect and gratitude to you guys! You have helped bring closure to the family and helped the diving community. Thank you!

[Joshua Smith]

Nice job. Take care of yourselves tonight.

X2. You all done good. Thank you, and please take some measure of solace in the good you did for the deceased and those who loved and knew him.

[kitsapdiver]

Okay, some update details.

This was a pair of recreational single tank divers. They had attempted to pull him shallower, one of them had a rapid ascent and was, I believe, taken conscious to the chamber and we have no information on that diver yet.

This speaks directly to the point you were making Lundy. Another take away is that we need to make sure we don't try to play superman in these cases. I think it's great that Lamont and other got involved to be a help, but find it unfortunate that another dive may have been hurt in the process.

[Tom Nic]

Nice job. Take care of yourselves tonight.

X2. You all done good. Thank you, and please take some measure of solace in the good you did for the deceased and those who loved and knew him.

Adding my voice to the kudos... Tough time...

[spatman]

Tragic news, but courageous acts. Makes me proud to have connections to you folks, even if they are mostly through the internetz.

[Penopolypants]

My deepest sympathy for everyone involved. It's terrible to lose a loved one, and sad work to recover a body.

[ljjames]

I want to take a moment to clarify something. Everyone jumping up saying that police/fire could/should do more, ask for community help, etc...

I got the call a bit before noon from one of our dive buddies who is a firefighter. Knowing that it would be a madhouse, but that after things settled down we might be able to be helpful, I threw a scooter in the truck, as did my buddy. we were planning a battery dive anyway, so in the event that things resolved quickly, we could always run grids. Fire was already wrapping up when I arrived and it was handed over to police. The politics are already pretty heavy there, so i quietly let them know we had scooters and mix and could be available to them.

They were really great about keeping us in the loop, but i understand why the didn't want us motoring around while they had multiple search boats topside. Both fire and police have their divers on coms and know what they are doing at all times. Having a handful of us scootering around would only add to mayhem. They don't really know us from adam, and the last thing they need would be one of us getting into trouble too...

We waited until they gave us the 'go ahead' and did the dive that lamont described. IF we had been in the water earlier, or if we had not been able to re-locate the body, our presence would have delayed their dive operation. The imperative thing here is not to fly off half cocked. There absolutely has to be a relationship between the different teams, even if some are civilian. The bottom line is, due to their regulations, if we are in the water, unless there is some kind of pre-approved plan, we will likely delay their ability to do their job.

We pushed the envelope a little, by heading straight out when the team who located him surfaced. The search teams had been in the water all day running searches and honestly my motivation, once I realized we could very quickly locate and mark, was to save them having to do another series of dives, this time in the dark. There was no hesitation... We'd been given the go ahead to dive and we had chatted with the officers about what they would prefer we do if we found him, so I made the call to dive.

If we had pushed said envelope earlier and tried to sneak around from cove 1 (thought crossed our mind) or had not located him rapidly and made their lives easier, this would likely be reading a different way.

There was communication between our little team and both fire and police throughout the duration. Keep in mind, once it becomes a recovery, the stakes change, it heavily downgrades the urgency, and they start looking at how to keep their own safe. These are firefighters and cops we are talking about here, as long as they think they can save a life, these guys are gonna go balls to the walls, and someone has to watch out for them too. If any of you have a cop or firefighter in your family, you know what i'm talking about. They were planning to come back tomorrow a.m. with sidescan sonar etc.

re: the first team of divers.

I believe the first diver made a somewhat controlled albeit fast ascent from ~105' due to a free flowing regulator, the second diver made a controlled ascent and stayed over the approximate spot and yelled to shore for Yvonne to call the authorities. I had just sat down on bulkhead and was getting out of gear, our scooters were still on beach, so it made sense to mark it before it was fully dark so that the search teams would not have to spend another 45 min and possibly come up unsuccessful. Thanks to their detailed directions, we were able to head to the log pile and take a right. We saw the missing divers light and located him quite rapidly, my gauge read around 5 min, we left the bottom at 8. SMB was deployed and clipped off carefully to a d-ring. We did not disturb the body.

[Dusty2]

You did good to not disturb the scene and simply mark it for the recovery team. That way they can see how and where he was found and asses the state of his equipment as found and maybe it will help to make a more informed assessment of the accident. It is never advisable to move a victim post mortum unless the police tell you to.

My condolences to his family and friends the others that were there and will have to deal with it.

[kdupreez]

Was Joanna one of the first team that found the body? I'm in the same dive club she is and I'm a little worried about the person who went to the chamber. I hope tragedy isn't compounded.

It's good that you were around to do all this.

from the Seattle Times:

One of those volunteer divers, a woman in her 50s, had a mask problem and was injured while ascending, firefighters said. She was taken to the hyperbaric chamber at Virginia Mason Medical Center.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/l ... prmid=4939

.

[whatevah]

Both Seattle PD and Seattle fire maintain professional dive teams. They are police and firefighters who sign up for the dive team as (coveted apparently) duty so no they are not volunteers. King and Pierce county sheriff's departments also maintain professional dive teams. I don't know about other WA Counties.

San Juan, Whatcom, Skagit and Island counties are volunteer based.

[lavachickie]

Thank you for the first person sharing, your big hearts and cool heads!

[bravecanary]

thanks for all of your help, searchers. You are all so incredibly brave. I hope everyone took good care of themselves last night, especially Johanna after her visit to Virginia Mason.

[dwashbur]

It's always sad when we lose one of our own, and my prayers go out to his family and friends.

Bravecanary, thanks for sharing. I can't imagine how hard this is on you, too. Please tell me you have someone you can talk to. If you don't, let us know. We're here for you, too.

[Alexitt]

To everyone involved, Our thought and Prayers are with you... It's a very sad time for everyone and let's not forget the families of those who died up on the mountains yesterday as well... Rough day...

[lavachickie]

What Dave said, BraveCanary!

[Nwcid]

I know I am the new guy here but just a thought about civilian vs "pro/paid/job duty" (not sure the correct word to use) dive rescue team. They train together with certain expectations and procedures. I know there are a lot of divers out there that are way more experienced then some/many of those guy.

So my thought is, since things like this happen several times a year, see if you can set up a group that is able to "train" with these full time groups. Maybe 2-4 times a year go to meetings to meet those teams. Find out what their expectations are, what their procedures are. This way when you show up at a scene (or if set up right you can even be on a call out list) you each have a better understanding of each others roles. This should make them more receptive to you and makes you less of a liability to them.

I know I do Fire/Rescue/EMS and we do have well meaning and even sometimes well trained folks show up in the rural areas to help. Unless I either know the person (which happens lots) or I know for sure their background/skill I can not use them. This is for the safety of all involved.

So again just my thoughts and maybe you have something like that and just didnt see it listed in this thread.

[Lonestar]

Laura that is the most awesome explanation I've ever seen from a someone who is not a public servant. Any incident is resolved more expediently if the scene is managed. It is nice when the public wants to be involved. However, risk vs benefit analysis and of course liability always enter into the situation. WAC has specific regulations regarding SAR emergency workers (volunteers) and those must be adhered to as well. With out scene management the original mission could very well become secondary if something happens to one of the "volunteers" thus leading to chaos and a scene ripe for additional tragedy.

As for the PSD divers, they are NOAA working diver certified and train continually. While a team might not own a specific resource, things like side scan radar are available from other teams or entities such as King County DNR. It just takes some time to get them in place. Circumstances change dramatically when an operation goes from a rescue to a recovery as the risk vs benefit changes. Risk a lot to save a lot, risk a little to save a little. There is no reason (public sentiment not withstanding) to endanger others divers if there is not a life to be saved.

[dwashbur]

Also, for the folks who found him (both teams): that can't be easy. We're here for you guys, too. Let us know if you need to talk, or just need a friend.

[BASSMAN]

Thanks to all who were involved in this recovery, wish it was a rescue. My thoughts and prayers go out to the family and loved ones, who are hurting from the loss.
Thanks Laura, for being so detailed and involved.

Yesterday was a sad day, both in the water and on the mountain.



I would tend to think some of our "Team Diver's" and/or GUE trained diver's train for rescue situations and might even train for search and recovery.

Not to discredit or discount other sources of Rescue Dive training.

If a diver wants to get more involved, I'm sure every bit of training you do, helps you get there.

It's a little Ironic that the deceased diver was doing just that. Training to become a better diver.

We all, should take away a lesson learned from each accident. Don't let it stop you from taking that next step in your dive training.

Even though I dive every week, I personally have become a little comfortable with my own level of training.
I'm not affiliated with any instructor but we all, owe it to ourselves, our families and our buddies to become, at least, Rescue Diver, trained.

[ljjames]

GUE etc.. training does not have anything specifically for rescues/recovery/searches to my knowledge at this juncture. They are working on something along these lines for the "Rec 2" program I believe. There are of course your standard unconscious diver recovery and surface management at different points in training, I believe hit on more heavily in Cave 1 and Cave 2 classes. In tech 1 we did unconscious diver recovery ascents with simulated deco stop... The idea with these though is that your buddy has an event RIGHT THERE and you are trying to get them out/back alive. As always safety of the surviving team members is paramount and would never EVER want it to be a multiple fatality for a body recovery.

The primary benefit is that we are steeped in team diving protocol so it made the scooter grid we ran and then the quick trip back down to put SMB on the body much easier and therefore more bandwidth to process the 'task at hand'.

Of note, this was Lamont and my first dives as a team with Casey, and he incorporated seamlessly, that is also a primary benefit of this type of training.

[lamont]

Actually, yes, my Rescue training is NAUI Rescue training with Bob Bailey. We went through this on another thread, but Bob, Peter, Scott Christopher, Larry McLean, etc all do Rescue courses.

I did actually see the very first minted GUE Rec 2 card when I was just down in MX, but its all very beta and its probably never going to be universal for everyone.

Really, the GUE training doing unconscious diver rescues just made me appreciate how much I did not want to do anything more than shoot a bag and get the hell out of there, its not easy work.

Credit goes to Bob for teaching me not to turn myself into another victim... Take those Rescue courses folks...

[cofford]

I also have rescue training through Bob Bailey, and tech courses with Scott Christopher. Definitely came in handy yesterday.

I think it's important to consider, in a situation like this, whether you are getting in the water as an asset to the team, or as a liability. The stress level on a dive like this is pretty high, and your decision making process can become impaired. I personally have over 200 dives to the logs, and probably 80 or so of those were on a scooter. Still, my heart was pounding, my SAC rate was up, and I wasn't as much of an asset to the team as I normally would be. It's important to think about what would happen if you had any type of failure in that situation. Could you handle it? This is not the time to find out.

Every bit of training that I have received was useful yesterday. No doubt.