Accident in Finland

[Igor]

If it had been me, the contents of this thread is more than I would expect in a positive way. I have got many things to think about. My history is with Classic Inspo and in my Vision I have the HUD in my wrist pointing usually to useless direction. Not familiar with the traffic lights yet. Hard to learn. I am used to look at the handset. Many times I do a small dive without stages with 12%O2 in diluent cyl at the end of the dive to check some new details in configuration or weighting. The unit might be shut off and I just do O2 flush to run it as O2 unit. I feel it is dangerous and I do think what I am doing and think I do it in a safe way. Somehow I feel this incident could have happened for me as well. I knew him and had the feeling he really did know what he was doing.
Just keep your valuable comments coming... it can happen to any of us.

Jukka

Deeply sorry for the loss of your friend. This accident is particularly bothersome for me as i am diving a JJ CCR as well. I started the thread and the intent was not to speculate on what have happened but to possibly learn something. Do you know anything more regarding what happened? Was the O2 bottle turned off or empty or was there something else that prevented the supply of oxygen?

 

[divingabe]

Hud is a great help but useless in shallow clear water on a bright sunny day. You may be better starting off a dive using your breather as an O2 breather only. Prior to entry flush the loop with O2 and shut off your adv if you have this ability. If you need to add loop volume while in shallows above 6m inject O2 you will then be able to tell wether your have it available. Once below 6m allow dill in the loop to lower your ppo to set point.
Armchair diving is easy and actual cicumstances often do not fit the picture. The loss of this individual is a tragedy and should not have occured leaving an O2 valve shut off does happen and can happen to anyone of us.
Dive carefully and never be in a rush to enter the water.
Gabe

 

[Iain3]

Do solders have check-lists for stripping & reassembling their rifles in the field, if it jams? Or are they drilled to perform the action over & over again until they can do it in their sleep.

Pilots use checklists because there is a lot to remember and a lot can go wrong. Soldiers maybe not because they are likely to need to do it under pressure and as quick as possible. If a diver finds they have a limited time to do the checks, and are under pressure, should they consider skipping the dive?

I'd be interested to know if military divers (or whoever sets their rebreathers up) use checklists.

You bring up a good discussion. I would be inclined to agree with you on vibration and audio alarms. There is one pit fall though in my opinion. The diver will probably become accustomed to listening for the audio or vibration and may not pay as much attention to the HUD and handset. The vibration or audio can fail. That would be the argument against these kind of warning devices anyway. In any case i think vibration would probably be better as audio could be ignored easier. Redundant vibration alarm?

You shouldn't become accustomed to listening for the vibration as an alternative to handsets or HUD because they should very rarely go off. If I had a vibrating mouthpeice for the last 100 dives I think it should have gone off twice.

Two vibrating devices would work, one on each side of the BOV, test them before you get in, chances of a critical rebreather failure AND both vibrators failing are slim.

 

[Igor]

Pilots use checklists because there is a lot to remember and a lot can go wrong. Soldiers maybe not because they are likely to need to do it under pressure and as quick as possible. If a diver finds they have a limited time to do the checks, and are under pressure, should they consider skipping the dive?

I'd be interested to know if military divers (or whoever sets their rebreathers up) use checklists.

They indeed do, at leasts in Sweden. You bring up a good point with soldiers under pressure. A bit similar before you jump in from a boat in rough seas in a way. Thats where you need a short 5 point (or so) check list in your mind covering the essentials such as o2 supply etc. Ideally an acronym. I still remember CONVENTID from a nitrox class i took 20 years ago for example.

During assembly a more comprehensive traditional checklist is appropriate and essential.

You shouldn't become accustomed to listening for the vibration as an alternative to handsets or HUD because they should very rarely go off. If I had a vibrating mouthpeice for the last 100 dives I think it should have gone off twice.

Two vibrating devices would work, one on each side of the BOV, test them before you get in, chances of a critical rebreather failure AND both vibrators failing are slim.

What i meant is that you may rely on an alarm and that maybe could cause you to be less observant of your HUD and handset. I am not saying this is correct. I have never used a DIVA. I am just saying that is the only argument i can come up with against alarm signals such as vibration and sound.

 

[Igor]

Regarding the DIVA. How do you check that its actually tracking the Po2 correctly and is not "frozen" ? It only blinks green if Po2 is above 0.7? It does not tell you the actual po2 like the shearwater? With the shearwater i bump up my o2 every once in a while to check that the HUD and handset are not frozen and track the po2 correctly. How do you deal with this on the DIVA?

 

[divingabe]

"They indeed do, at leasts in Sweden. You bring up a good point with soldiers under pressure. A bit similar before you jump in from a boat in rough seas in a way. Thats where you need a short 5 point (or so) check list in your mind covering the essentials such as o2 supply etc. Ideally an acronym. I still remember CONVENTID from a nitrox class i took 20 years ago for example.

During assembly a more comprehensive traditional checklist is appropriate.
"quoted from Igor
You are quite right we call it doing out 2's This was thought to me by my instructor 6yrs ago and I never enter the water without doing these, they only take a couple of minutes once the unit has been donned.
1- 2 valves opened
2- check pressure guages enough available gasses for the dive
3- 2 inflations dry suit and wing
4- 2 manual injections dill and o2 working
5- 2 minutes prebreath minimum
6- 2 handsets on and reading cells properly set point and responding to
change in ppo this is done while prebreathing
7- 2 mouth pieces DSV and bail or BOV and bail
I make sure to accomplish these each and everytime I don the unit sometimes in the stated order but not always as you can see this simple list can be easily committed to memory and after some time it just becomes a habit
Hope this can help to mitigate further mishaps.
Gabe

 

[swadiver]

Take a piece of white electrical tape, put your "pre-jump" checklist on it with a fine line Sharpie pen, and tape it to your Shearwater, Hammerhead, Apecs, etc. this has the last most critical items on it before you dive, including checking O2 bottle status. (valve open/quanity check, manual adds, solenoid operation, etc))

this is a very easy and convenient place for this checklist, so it is easy to use and makes it much more likely you will do this critical check.

my two cents

 

[JukkaO]

Deeply sorry for the loss of your friend. This accident is particularly bothersome for me as i am diving a JJ CCR as well. I started the thread and the intent was not to speculate on what have happened but to possibly learn something. Do you know anything more regarding what happened? Was the O2 bottle turned off or empty or was there something else that prevented the supply of oxygen?

Please slow down. If I knew him is not the same as friendship. Be careful not to tell anything but facts that you know. I feel he was a friend but I suppose many his friends have never heard about me.

I am not involved to the investigation and free to discuss. My personal policy is not to spread accident information but to give critics to processes to share info. I prefer reports made by persons involved. Official police etc. investigation is too slow and the reports are not shared. Nobody likes to open the case after a year or so. Newspapers motives are too thin. My experience is that it is possible to collect most of the data available within some weeks and write a story based on facts how the situation developed. One can contact all the persons involved and relatives to collect all the data. Relatives can help getting authorization for the best specialists to help the police in unit specific technical issues. Publication can be agreed with all involved and the result is better than in newspapers for sure. My opinion is that report is needed in time and it can be updated if some important info will be available later. I feel too many are just too scary, or do not have motivation to make any move to get a good investigation going. When I have been active there have been some trying to slow me down and wait....

If I would be on accident site I would do all the checks to the unit before the police would tell not to... and give the report to the police of course. There is a big risk that some info is loosed before investigation.

If there will be a report of this case one day, I will monitor if it is shared here as well.

Jukka

 

[Michael Thornton]

Regarding the DIVA. How do you check that its actually tracking the Po2 correctly and is not "frozen" ? It only blinks green if Po2 is above 0.7? It does not tell you the actual po2 like the shearwater? With the shearwater i bump up my o2 every once in a while to check that the HUD and handset are not frozen and track the po2 correctly. How do you deal with this on the DIVA?

the DIVA has 2 modes:
1. Set Point Mode (Green = Good, Red = Bad)
With this if the PO2 is within 15% +/- of your setpoint the DIVA flashes Green
If it is 15-20% +/- It blinks Amber (The Rev D has no amber and instead does red/greed together)
If it is more than 20% away from setpoint it blinks red

2. The second mode is PP02 mode (Smithers code) This is the same as a shearwater. Blinks Amber at 1.0 and blinks green for every .1 above and red for every .1 below.

Whichever mode you are in if the PO2 is less than .19 or greater than 1.9 The DIVA will vibrate.

So it does tell you actual PO2

 

[Igor]

the DIVA has 2 modes:
1. Set Point Mode (Green = Good, Red = Bad)
With this if the PO2 is within 15% +/- of your setpoint the DIVA flashes Green
If it is 15-20% +/- It blinks Amber (The Rev D has no amber and instead does red/greed together)
If it is more than 20% away from setpoint it blinks red

2. The second mode is PP02 mode (Smithers code) This is the same as a shearwater. Blinks Amber at 1.0 and blinks green for every .1 above and red for every .1 below.

Whichever mode you are in if the PO2 is less than .19 or greater than 1.9 The DIVA will vibrate.

So it does tell you actual PO2

Ok, thanks. Seems like good features. The DIVA can only work together with a hammerhead handset right? No way using it with a shearwater?

 

[Michael Thornton]

Ok, thanks. Seems like good features. The DIVA can only work together with a hammerhead handset right? No way using it with a shearwater?

Sadly no. It is powered off of one of the handsets. Maybe some day Kevin J will make one that can be retrofitted on other units without having to put a whole extra handset on there. It probably would not be possible to have the Setpoint mode since for that you have to be able to tell it what your setpoint is.

 

[henri69]

My great and skillfull instructor Jani Haaja always reminded that the most important thing is that you always know what you are breathing, check handset! Go through the checklist and prebreath!!!!!!

 

[Garwa]

Two fatalities of JJ divers in two years in Finland. And what - how many JJ divers we have currently in Finland? 20-30 or so, that makes scary percentages.

Makes me think that either the product is not so safe or there is definitely something wrong or missing in the training? It cannot be both or just the other. Don't want to point fingers but saying out loud what some people in the Finnish diving community are thinking.
Sorry for the loss of another fellow Finn.

 

[Igor]

Two fatalities of JJ divers in two years in Finland. And what - how many JJ divers we have currently in Finland? 20-30 or so, that makes scary percentages.

Makes me think that either the product is not so safe or there is definitely something wrong or missing in the training? It cannot be both or just the other. Don't want to point fingers but saying out loud what some people in the Finnish diving community are thinking.
Sorry for the loss of another fellow Finn.

From what i know there have been a total of 2 fatalities world wide on the JJ CCR and both are in Finland. This does not have to mean anything though.

 

[Chris Brown]

+1 one Mark Chase comment to. Having a protocol where you bump up the o2 manually on the surface to as near 1.0 as you can get makes very much sense. I do this as well and it somewhat takes away the "problem" with getting accustomed to blinking red. An additional benifit is that if you continue pumping in 02 when the lung collapses to eliminate the ADV from triggering towards reaching 6m you can also easily do a current limiting /MV check at 6m as you are on 100% o2 when you reach there. Then you flush down the loop with dil before you decent further and get another system test done for "free". This is a straight forward routine to follow.

And check lists can not be underestimated!

This is a great protocol, however its environment specific. It wouldnt work here in the Gulf Stream for example where hot drops to deep wrecks are common. No time to pause at 6m for anything unfortunately. If you jumped in with 1.0 youd better be able to flush quickly, which again slows you down / affects your negative drop etc.

 

[GLOC]

Two fatalities of JJ divers in two years in Finland. And what - how many JJ divers we have currently in Finland? 20-30 or so, that makes scary percentages.

Makes me think that either the product is not so safe or there is definitely something wrong or missing in the training? It cannot be both or just the other. Don't want to point fingers but saying out loud what some people in the Finnish diving community are thinking.
Sorry for the loss of another fellow Finn.

Unfortunately without knowing the root cause of those fatalities you can't make that leap. True, it might be environment, training or attitude but without evidence you can't jump to those conclusions.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

 

[Mr fish]

This is a great protocol, however its environment specific. It wouldnt work here in the Gulf Stream for example where hot drops to deep wrecks are common. No time to pause at 6m for anything unfortunately. If you jumped in with 1.0 youd better be able to flush quickly, which again slows you down / affects your negative drop etc.

i seem to be able to jump in with a breather full of o2 swim down to 6+M get my unit to beep its tits of , blow out my nose and suck on my adv, hot drop/ lol ( Go down like a sack of shite ) to the wreck with out spiking my o2 on the way down from 6m

maybe its gas im diving , negative drop ,,, you still got breath m8 , id say its all in the timing

 

[Paul S]

Seems to my that there's so little information about what actually happened that there's nothing to discuss.

• It seems like they suspect hypoxia.
• They don't know why.

They list that the bottle could be closed or empty. A very cursory inspection would be able to exclude at least one of those. If the bottle's closed and has gas it's not empty. If it's empty, it wasn't closed. They haven't got to the point of excluding anything yet.

Until we know more there's no reason to suspect any endemic fault on the JJ.

 

[Blomman]

What is known about the first accident mentioned in this thread?

 

[Igor]

What is known about the first accident mentioned in this thread?

I tried to google it and can not find anything. Sad fact is that we will probably never learn anything from these two accidents. There is just no information.