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Autopsy of Coast Guard divers

Thread Status: Hello , There was no answer in this thread for more than 60 days.
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WTF? Bad planning, protocols, whatever. I doubt we'll ever know what really happened.
Erik
 
Its a sad loss to both familys. I dont see how a dive support team holding ropes can allow a dive that was supposed to be 20 feet go down to the depth mentioned in the article, did they have the ropes on a winder and just walked away to get a cuppa coffee while their mates were in the water. This seems to be a sad case of incompetency, or a big mistake on someones side. But like Erick said well probably never know the true cause.
 
Well, the depth was not planned, but horizontal distance might have been - although 180 feet is quite a lot if you go down, it is nothing if you go horizontally. And since it was under the ice, the support did not necessarily know that they descend instead of simply swimming away. That told, I do not want to talk out the support team of their responsability. For sure, it might have been done better and safer. I just want to point out that you should not judge unless you know all circumstances or were present personally. Finally that's why there is a comission investigating the case. Not that I believe that investigating commissions always releave the truth, but at least they pretend to.
 
True to that, I didnt mean to imply that the blame lay solely by the support team, it was just meant that surely someone on the surface could have noticed there was something wrong if proper or more measurements of safety were taken, eg a video camera mounted to a tank relaying images to the boat or something like that. But when all is said and done it is a sad accident and some unfortunate family members are minus people they love...
 
From the article it is evident that everythng went rather fast, and that the support team did notice something was going wrong, and that's why they pulled them up. The consequent rapid ascent caused the lung edema and embolia, and although the divers were possibly already inconcient due to hypoxia and hypercapnia, the little written in the report suggests it was the fast descent that contributed to the deaths.
 
The two deaths are still a mistery. Both victims had approved the navy divers course and the girl, Jessica Hill, 30, was in fact an experienced civilian diver before joining the Coast Guard 4 years ago. This terrible accident is further evidence of the magnitude of the risks involved in diving. One distraction, one mistake, one thing that you forget to double check before jumping overboard, can lead to fatal consequences. And there are also risks beyond your control, like finding yourself face to face with something you did'nt expect, like a shark or a hungry orca. What really baffles me in this case is the conclusion reached by the phisycians that Jessica Hill went too deep, too fast, out of control, and then was pulled back also too fast. Why didn't she drop her weighbelt? Whay about her BC vest? Was she maybe pull down by something? I guess we will never know.
 
I did not even know the Coast guard had scuba divers.
Were they a private group of divers?
 
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