wreckdiving trip in Italy almost ends very tragically. (oxtox)

[eggbird]

The past 2 weeks I did a wreck diving trip in Italy (Liguria) with a couple of friends of mine.

The First week we did some nice wrecks near Santa Margherita Ligure (with Bruno) and this was lots of fun. We did wrecks in the 50 to 65 meter range, the Genova, Il KT di Sestri, Saint Naizaire.


The Next week we went to another location in Italy and met with another dive team to do some dives on the Amoco Milford Haven, The Pontida and the Re Faruk.

On the last day of the diving trip, I decided not to go, because my wife wanted me to join her on a trip to the city of Genova and see the Genova Aquarium.

The guys that went diving had decided to do a penetration of the upper part of The Haven, and not to go deeper than approx. 60M. 2 of the divers descended to 47M and went in the wreck at that depth.

They were diving with double 20's (litres) filled with Tx19/35 and 1 80Cuf EAN50, 1 80Cuf Oxygen and another 80Cuf with Tx19/35.

They decided to use the Tx19/35 in the 80Cuf as a stage, because after the trip they didn't have any use for it (we live in The Netherlands where we don't have any depths to use such gasses).

Inside the wreck they descended to a lower deck, but almost immediatly the front guy noticed his buddy wasn't following him anymore. He looked back and saw his fins against the roof of the wreck.

He reconed that something wasn't OK and immediatly turned around to be of assistance to his buddy.

He got the scare of his life. He saw his buddy convulsing, with the regulator removed from his mouth and his mask was filled with water by the contracting facial muscles.

He immediatly started to get his buddy out of the wreck. in which he was successfull. After that he located the other divers of the team, and one of them decided to bring him back to the surface.

At this point in time the body was lifeless and lacking any vital signs (pulse e.g.)

The guy ascended with the corpse an delivered him to the diving boat where they alarmed the authorities and started CPR procedures

After this he went back down, and met with his buddy to do a wet recompression starting from 60M and doubling all stop times. This was possible in his case due to the use of an inspiration rebreather (they are good for something after all :-) )

When the Medivac helicopter arrived they took the body and managed to reanimate they guy. How much luck can one have ?

The accident happened due to incorrect stage markings and even worse due to trying to indentify the correct gas by color coding of hoses. (before the dive the guy switched his EAN50 reg with the Tx19/35 reg.

So you can imagine how "happy" I was that I wasn't there but at the Genova Acquarium instead.

At this moment everyone of the team is safe back home, and there is a big discussion going on within the team over stage bottle marking procedures etc.

Me and my buddy are IANTD trained, but also DIR minded / trained (did DIR-F will do TECH-1 next year) and again we can see that that's the ONLY way to go ! Luckely I don't have to explain to my buddy how to mark stages and not use color coding etc.

So a nice trip with almost a horrible ending !

[Richard Lundgren]

Hi Eggbird,

Thanks for sharing this with us here at the forum. Scary stuff and indeed a good recovery enabling a happy ending.

You are right, we identified OxTox as our worst enemy long ago and developed the DIR bottle marking and switch procedure to prevent this. The mistake of color coding equipment and putting the wrong reg on the wrong tank on the surface is classical.

I'm happy that the diver survived and that the team did what was right.

Warm regards,
Richard Lundgren

[Graham Mills]

Hello Eggbird

thanks for sharing this and I'm really happy to hear that every one is OK and safe again.

i do have one question if thats OK

when i dive with a bottom gas in a "stage/travel" cylinder i breathe that down first and then switch to the back gas, stowing the cylinder as it won't be needed, so did he put the wrong reg in on the Boat before entering the water? and checking the cylinder

i suppose there must have been some kind of marking on it to say what the fill was?

Graham

[db8us]

Also personally i would use more He. But thanks for sharing !
When did the diver change to this stage ? Why was the buddy not checking what the others are breathing? Thats what the big MOD is for :-)

But again. Thanks for sharing.
And support-divers bringing gas are better options than an Inspiration :D

Michael

[eggbird]

He used the wrong gas from the start. He thought he was breathing the travel gas, but instead he breathed the EAN50.

His buddy also thought that he was breathing the travel gas, due to unclear (so not the big MOD style) stage markings.

and true, support divers are better then a yellow box :D

[Graham Mills]

were there any markings on the cylinder to let you know what was in it, if so this was a major diver error.

if you cant clip the right cylinder on and breathe the correct gas at the surface your doomed from the start

What about pre dive checks as this would be more the point than cylinder markings the team should have picked up on that before getting wet?

but I'm really glad everyone got out OK, I bet he doesn't do that again

dive safe Graham

[eggbird]

Well, I think it's mainly due to incorrect cylinder markings. I spoke to his buddy and he said that he was absolutely sure at the moment that his buddy was breathing the correct gas.

So how can a pre dive check work if someone did't label the stages correctly ??

all in all it was just plain stupid, and I'm glad I went on doing something else that day.

[Richard Lundgren]

Well, I think it's mainly due to incorrect cylinder markings. I spoke to his buddy and he said that he was absolutely sure at the moment that his buddy was breathing the correct gas.

So how can a pre dive check work if someone did't label the stages correctly ??

all in all it was just plain stupid, and I'm glad I went on doing something else that day.

Egbert,

You are correct. Things must be done correct from the beginning or problems will be taken along into the water making any dive more challenging than needed.

Cheers,
Richard Lundgren

[Graham Mills]

Well, I think it's mainly due to incorrect cylinder markings. I spoke to his buddy and he said that he was absolutely sure at the moment that his buddy was breathing the correct gas.

So how can a pre dive check work if someone did't label the stages correctly ??

all in all it was just plain stupid, and I'm glad I went on doing something else that day.

If there were no markings on the cylinder to tell you what was in it after the fill; your friend was very lucky indeed,

you should get him to buy a lotto ticket with luck like that he should win

good luck and safe diving

graham

[db8us]

I think the lesson is learned here and this is the most important thing !

An almost similar accident happend in Hemmoor a few months ago, also due to improper markings/procedure.

An there was also this near fatality in croatia maybe one or two years ago, but this was due to lousy filling/analyzing/marking.

Michael

[eggbird]

He had the standard IANTD decals that say "DECOMIX MOD" etc, but there where more than 1 decal per bottle !! stupid...

[db8us]

Hmmm but these dudes were not with Bruno the days before ??? Right ?

[Richard Lundgren]

In the mid 90ties me and my brother were cruising Bahamian waters on a live-aboard diving a deep wall outside Bimini. Another team had jumped in before heading off the cliff starting at 30 meters. We had to fight the current hard this day and we could notice that the team before were hovering badly. Our plan was to go deep but we decided that this was not the day and reduced our planed depth to 70m. The other team headed down deeper....

As me and my brother headed back we deliberately moved slow as we predicted that the other team would stumble into problems. To cut the story short, at 27 meters the other team had used up all their usable decompression gases (they were using exotic 36% and 80% deco gasses I think, well thed did have nitrox written all over them). We gave away our 50% bottles @ 21m as they relay started to look desperate and did our deco on back gas. We deployed a SMB indicating that we there was some kind of problem. A dive guru came down with two bottles. One marked nitrox with a content label reading 50%, the other bottle was marked nitrox on one side and oxygen on the other with no constance label at all.

Neither my brother or even considered using any of these bottles, as we were comfortable decoing on back gas, until we could start using our 100%, and did not trust these marking, but the other team was running dry again :cool: and took the bottles not even trying to figure or check out what was in them. By a chance I decided to intervene and stooped the diver trying to switch to the dual marked bottle @ 15m. Later on the surface that bottle proved to contain 100%.

We approached the divers later on trying to ask if they were all right, they ignored us completely as if nothing special had happened. Incidences like this makes wounder.

[eggbird]

No db8us this was not with Bruno. When I was with Bruno I was just with my own buddy, and like I said before, we do our markings (switches, pre dive checks etc.) DIR style.

[db8us]

No db8us this was not with Bruno. When I was with Bruno I was just with my own buddy, and like I said before, we do our markings (switches, pre dive checks etc.) DIR style.

gooooooooooooooood !

Thanks for the Info !

Michael

[Dan Partelly]

>>We approached the divers later on trying to ask if they were all right, >>they ignored us completely as if nothing special had happened. >>Incidences like this makes wounder.

Richard, I guess you deserved that for giving them your gas and preventing them to tox themselves :P

Sarcasm aside, during many years of dry caving I seen that many times helping somone sometimes results in those persons beeing humiliated and ego-bruised so badly that they would avoid you in the best case, back talk you in the worst. I guess their confidence comes from other persons oppinions about them, and not from a healthy self esteem , constant self evaluation , and need to improvment and learn from any oportunity. Its like some ppl are really afraid to even learn something new.


Leaving this aside, what always drawn me towards GUE, even from a country which is in stone age from a diving point of view like Romania,
and where only a handfull of ppl heard about GUE was the claim of several GUE instructors that they create thinking divers, and tech *how to think*.
Of course , this is not a GUE only trait for good instructors, there are others
out there which are very knwoledgable, and may develop this trait in their students.

I guess if divers you helped where teched *to think*, said divers whould not hev gotten themselves in such a mess . Unfortunately , too many ppl are teached mechanically a set of rules./


What I didnt like , is that some ppl which had GUE training (as to be fair, I dint heard one singluar GUE instructor saying this, only trainees ) all too often make small things look like some kind of voodo for others. Insinuation that a thing will only work for you only if you are trained by a certain agency, and a procedure is good only if you received training from said agency , and noone else are hilarious at best. It was also interesing too see same ppl tring to burry from public eye any decompression related discution,
for example I seen on a DIR board an attempt to move a discution related to ratio deco (right after AG put his ratio deco document out ) in private with access only for ppl which did Tech1, as to save the poor others from the black magic and vodoo which comes to it. Interesting enough , the first to explain publicly ratio deco, altough he used a different term was not a GUE (or former) instructor at all, but , IIRC , a TDI one. Its handle is Doppler on The decostop. And all too often I hear from ppl that ratio deco is GUE only , and all others which will doit will suffer vodoo :P

I am happy I joined this board. It proves to be a place where I already learned some new things from just several threads. I hope it has long life and more and more ppl will contribute to decompression forums in a civilized way , so we can all benefit , especially ppl like me which needs ot learn a lot. What we learn , we will give back to the ones following in out footsteps.

[Richard Lundgren]

Apparently there was a tox incidence yesterday in Swedish/Finish waters. The diver switched to oxygen instead of 50% @ 21m, got the shakes and passed out during the intermediate stops but was brought up to the surface by the team diver. The diver regained consciousness up in the boat and was air lifted to the closest hyperbaric chamber.

More information will be presented later on. For now we can hope that the diver will have a speedy recovery.

Take care,
Richard Lundgren

[Gledders]

Thoughts with those affected - both casualty and rescuers. Hopeful of favourable outcomes :)

[eggbird]

I have to make a rectification (and in a certain way an addition) on my earlier posts, due to a conversation I had today with the diver who had the accident.

The Diver who had the accident told me the following :

The reason that something went wrong was not due to incorrect stage markings or color coding of hoses / regs, but due to the fact that they didn't do the correct pre dive / bubble checks and due to lack of concentration of both divers.

For starters, the guy on the boat handed over the deco cilinders not in the way the diver asked for the first stage he got was his 50% the next his 100% and the final stage was his travel/bottom gas.

Secondly, they didn't do a proper bubble check, what they normally do on 6 meters.

When they got to the bottom of the shot line, on top of the deck of the Haven, their procedure was to clip of all extra stages, and at that point both divers still didn't notice that he was breathing the wrong stage.

So why did this happen ?
According to the diver a lack of concentration and not following correct pre dive procedures at that moment.

The deco decals on the stages were correct so this was not the reason why this happened.

The reason for the incorrectness in the story I told before is probably that the buddy in question was still in a state of shock when he told me the complete story and mutual misunderstandings.

Of course I don't blaim him because of the experience he had a few days before. (What would your state of mind be after such an experience)

Nevertheless may all of this be a warning to everyone, to be and stay alert when you dive. especially when multiple stages are involved.

Safe Diving !

Eggbird

[Gledders]

I recently (well about two months ago) switched to the wrong stage.

It was on a training dive and we were at about 12 metres. I decided to switch to my bottom stage for practice and signaled my buddy that I would switch. He OK'd the switch proceedure and we swam on.

Later, I switched back to backgas and tried to restow the regulator to find that there was already a reg in place on the bottle - I had been breathing my 50 per cent mix.

On the surface, my buddy said - I wondered why you were switching to your 50 per cent but we were way above the MOD so I OK'd the switch.

Nice to know that had it been a 'real' dive my error would have been picked up by our proceedures. As it was, it was a good learning experince for me and this incident (and my recent Tech 2 training) has made my switching proceedures even more thorough than they were before.

Never say it will never happen to you - it can and it is why team diving and strict proceedures are so important :)

[Deep6]

You mentioned that the convulsing diver was brought directly to the surface. Do you have any info on depth (47 m), bottom time, and ascent rate, and any more specifics about the later recompression? Was the convulsing diver given any chamber treatment?

Would be an interesting profile to hear about.

Thanks for sharing the info!