Read and Learn......

rdmmdr

friends:

it has been sometime since this tragedy occurred, and with the final report out this is not the place to argue about battery bounce or unit failures. this is the place to remember a member of our community that is no longer with us. and with gods help no more of us will join him because of the same reasons. if you wish to argue or speculate about causes of failure start a different thread.

i personally think the title should be changed, i suggest " we lost one more and us as a community will be lacking for it". whither the fault was the equipment or the individual, us as a community, have suffered a loss and his family have suffered the biggest loss of all. so let us respect the family and end this.

rick

CharlieT

This tragedy already has a thread surely and I expressed my condolences then.

The facts are clearly presented and backed up.

Why are some Rebreather World members AGAIN entering into pointless and offensive debate and speculation?

Why is it not good enough that someone has taken the trouble to post this report?

There is nothing new to be learnt from this incident that hasn't been posted and discussed many times before on this site. Stuart's "Minimising CCR Fatalities" article also covers the importance of pre-dive and early dive procedures.

The poor man made a mistake, let's leave it at that.

Charlie

CharlieT

Well put, Rick. Time we handled fatalities better than this.

Charlie

PhilSiswick

Agree

Sorry to anyone that took anything that I wrote as speculation - I was testing the hypotheses behind someone elses speculation. I certainly wished to cause no offense and tried to make that clear. There was a separate thread for expression of condolences - that is not polluted by this discussion and I would never have posted my comments to that.

However, I do feel that speculation that is based on a misreading of a report or a lack of understanding of a unit (I believe that both apply here and I have seen both any number of times in other discussions) should be challenged. Someone said in another thread about pre-reading for a Mod 1 course that one of the dangers of reading Rebreather World is that the information is sometimes wrong - do we want to let inaccurate speculation on a thread like this stand?

Agree, but berating people for speculating isn't the right approach (unless they are genuinely offensive, which I don't think anyone here has been). Addressing their speculation is, IMHO.

Just my 0.2p worth,

__________________
Phil (WSKD 0001)

I have always felt that the dive I am on is not nearly important as the dives I plan to be on the rest of my life. Tom Rose, 2007

The person who gets the farthest is generally the one who is willing to do and dare. The sure thing boat never gets far from shore. Charles A. Lindbergh

www.hugsac.org.uk

UKSteve

Deperately sad and tragic...

.. and now, hopefully this next bit is considered to be back on thread...does anyone know if any current production eCCRs or aftermarket heads have electronics that switch on automatically if placed at say 10ft water pressure when in the off position (as most Dive computers do)?

I know it isn't going to switch on a closed O2 bottle but if it causes the electrics / HUD / audible alarm to scream at you it could be just enough to get you to respond / realise the issue and do enough to survive.

Maybe this is better discussed as the subject of a new thread but does anyone else out there think it would be a useful / desirable / essential safety feature? I know it is a balance of advantages and disadvantages and is not something that could be implimented in existing eCCRs overnight. However, I cannot see anything physically preventing this feature on, for instance, Vision electronics... obviously a lot of programming changes but no mechanical switch.

I am simply not sufficiently experienced to know the answer but if enough people in Rebreather World were to see it as a net advantage then perhaps the best way to honour Nigel and bring something positive from this terrible loss would be for RBW to campaign for its consideration in future development work by the manufactures.

Steve

teksimple

The Hammerhead.

ScubaDadMiami

The Hammerhead has wet sensors that turn the unit on as soon as it gets wet whether or not the user has activated the handsets.

If you get a chance to look at the manual, it has a "threat matrix," listing common issues and then incorporates features to deal with them. For example, even if the diver puts the unit into open circuit mode, the minute the PO2 drops to .19, the alarm goes off, and the solenoid fires to prevent hypoxia.

Perhaps another feature that should be added to computers would be tank pressure indicators so that an alarm would ring before hose IP drops to nil, giving the diver time to turn the tank on. One would think that turning on the tank would be easily remembered and followed as part of standard protocol. However, there have just been too many instances of divers having tanks turned off entering the water.

My protocol is to drain all pressure from the hoses when I turn off gas so that I don't accidentally think I have left the gas turned on when, in fact, it is off.

__________________
Howard Packer
IANTD CCR Instructor
Miami Beach, Florida
CCRDiveTraining.com

PeteS

Well now the thread has returned to noramality (whatever that is), I hope that if one person who has read this report stays alive because of it, then I will have hit the target.

Now some of this is my conjecture in that I cannot actually know what happened underwater, and some is fact:-

Nigel died because he was distracted from the dive. He had a new suit and was thinking about that, not the dive. Come to think of it, it wasn't a dive, it was actually a bouyancy check for the new suit. In 15m of water. He made an elementary mistake of not turning the control system on, (he had done a prebreathe etc 20 minutes before and then shut down the unit while suiting up) and I think he compounded that by not looking at his displays when he was in the water. I know he didn't turn on the power because when we recovered the body, the switches were in the OFF position. Unfortunately he's not the first to die like this, and I doubt he'll be the last.

So, you see how easy it is to die. On a 15m piddle about checking how much lead you need.

So, no matter what you are doing, check your PPO2. If you get distracted, if you stop thinking about what you are breathing, you die. Simple. Just don't let it be you. I really wouldn't want one of you guys to be doing CPR on a body while the Widow looks on. I have never felt so inadequate in my life.

So, next you you are out having a great dive, every time you look at your gauges, just say "Thanks Nigel". If that's his legacy, it's a good one. But I'd rather he was here to tell you himself.

__________________
Pete S.

http://www.steggle.co.nz

Every silver lining has a cloud

pabusk

Where does this bouncing come from ?? I read the report and it seems to be quite clear.

"The report stated that because Mr Lees' electronic handsets were not turned on, "

It didn't say that the handsets where not working ...

I don't think questioning FACTS is helping anyone here. I'm constantly hearing that NO results are published after accidents. But be honost, if I'm seeing that even reports are immidiately being pulled out off proportions I don't think we can expected an increase in these communications.

Just my 2cents
Paul

CharlieT

I wasn't referring to your post. You refer to the tragedy involved showing awareness of the real issue here.

Charlie