USCG Diving Mishap Gallery

[diver-dad]

A gallery of 12 pictures posted @ the Seattle Times.

Shows the scenes leading up to the deaths, including good pix of the gear they were wearing. To me, a key here is the festive (read as "unfocused & lackadaisical") attitude by the crew in general. ... "Ice liberty:" including touch football, what looks like a beer party, and other things.

This has been discussed elsewhere in this forum, but couldn't recall where - thought it'd be good here in the education section.

Link is:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/p ... 619/1.html

[RSdancey]

The ice liberty thing is in my mind a red herring. The only people who needed to be sober here were the divers and their surface support team. If the rest of the boat wanted to party hard, it had little bearing on the safety of the dive itself. When I dive, I don't expect everyone on shore to be focused on my safety -- just the people who are supposed to be.

I hate to be a broken record, but the thought that keeps running through my mind is "if this was supposed to be a shallow training dive, why did the tenders let several hundred feet of line go into that hole."

It's pretty obvious if you read between the lines in the USCG final report what happened; some combination of frozen regulators & failure to use their BCDs doomed these two. For whatever reason, they could not inflate their drysuits, and their tenders didn't do the one thing that might have saved them (pulled them up when they started dropping so fast that it took two people lying on the ice in "tug of war" position to stop the rope).

The USCG had good regulations in place to make this dive safe, if they had been followed. They weren't. The presence of a properly trained Diving Supervisor who should have recognized the real nature of all that line paying out into the hole might have saved the diver's lives. On some level, I think that's where the command failure really occurred: It makes sense that when diving in extreme conditions, you want someone topside who knows what is happening and supposed to happen in a dive op. By not recognizing that need (or checking the regulations to see if such a person was required), the COO and the rest of the chain of command really did fail.

A real shame.

Ryan

[Diver_C]

I agree with Ryan on the red herring issue. I read all the reports I could find, and saw all the pictures already, but one new thing I noticed re-looking at the pictures is that they are wearing their tanks backwards. I do not have enough knowledge to state whether or not that is a bad thing, but I do find it odd, and have never seen anyone doing that. That whole thing is a shame. Hope people everywhere have learned something.

[CaptnJack]

The tanks were worn backwards to accomodate the AGA masks which take an LP hose from the left (unless you use a swivel which have a history of failing).

I believe beer, parties and ice football have no place around technical diving operations. Some SCUBA agencies actually prohibit members from drinking "around" diving activities, which I believe is directed at these kinds of circumstances.

At the very least their unqualified tenders were distracted by the adjacent party. Maybe they would have stopped the descent without the distractions - maybe not since they weren't trained nor using the standard line signals in the Navy manual as required. But the carnival atmosphere certainly didn't help.

The divers themselves weren't really qualified for recreational dives, so its not surprising they died on a technical dive. The full report describing their training, experience, gear and preparation is downright shameful. There were at least 6 places this accident chain could have been broken. Not being rediculously overweighted and having a working power inflator being the most obvious. The party next door, while not directly causal, is indicative of the seriousness the divers planning process. Which I think the report appropriately notes.

Richard

[RDW]

I am proud to have been one of those US Coast Guard divers in my career. I served over two decades in Uncle Sam's canoe club. I was a diver on the USCGC Polar Sea, USCG Pacific Strike Team, USCG TACLET Ops. I did over 130 hours under both Antarctic and Arctic ice. I am very proud of our operations. We constantly reviewed, scrutinized and practiced our diving protocols...day in, day out. It is still the same today on on all CG units. Divers or not.
Yes, it was a big screw-up on board the USCGC Healy last year. Solid diving safety and training rules were not followed. Shame on those in the chain of command who were responsible! Pleae hear me, I beg of you: DO NOT equate "ice liberty with drunken debauchery. It doesn't work that way. Only two "3.2%" beers were allowed per crewmember and only those not on watch or on critical job assigment. Those of you who have served on any US Naval or Coast Guard units know it isn't what the uneducated media makes it out to be. For those of you who, "ain't been there, ain't done that"...you really can't pass judgement. It is hard work! I hurt everytime this terrible incident is discussed. I am proud that there are damn fine folks who are the norm, the day to day hardworking and dedicated citizens. They are the ones who work tirelessly to make sure that this type of incident doesn't happen again. However(sadly),because we are human, it just may happen. The fact is, this was an abberation. When one considers how many man-hours have been spent on safe dive ops, the Healy incident was a very rare (but deadly) accident. May it never happen again. Semper Paratus!

[decodiver25]

Randy great post and definatley have great respect for nave and coast guard divers and what they do because i know its a dam hard job. It is a tradjic accident of what happend to these guys and hopefully they learned from this and will move and with more training and proper guidlines...anyway good post randy