Accident on the Doria

DAMN ! not again. SOO sorry for friends and family, I dont think i am ever going to do that dive and the older i get i seem to care less and less. God bless.
 
The gentleman's name is Steven Slater.

His family issued the following statement:

'It is with extreme regret that we post the following.

"It is with absolute sadness that we have to tell you that Steven died on Monday 24th July whilst #diving in the United States. We are all heartbroken but draw comfort knowing he was doing something that he loved."

Steve was a hugely respected and well-liked British wreck and technical diver. He was part of the Darkstar Team. (A Brit mixed gas diving team). Steve pursued his passion, actively researching, then searching and diving missing wrecks with his friends.

Last year he wrote an article on diving the #Jutland wrecks. You can find a link to his article here: http://bit.ly/2tJugXD

Steve died diving the SS Andrea Doria. A wreck on many divers bucket list."
 
Surely getting a few pieces of china is not worth one's life, the Andrea Doria strikes yet again. Gutted for his loss, he was a longstanding member of the expedition teams over here in Malta on our WWII wrecks.
 
When I perform customer drysuit repairs, I always check the inflation valve. Any hint of sticking - it's taken apart and serviced. The big three failure points in RB tec diving seems to be O2 cells, CO2 hits, and inflation valves. Years ago in the Seattle area, Virginia Mason re-wrote it's 1st respond-er practices after a OC tec diver had an uncontrolled assent from 300 fsw or nearly 90 meters, which was caused by a stuck inflation valve.
 
apitkin said:
I cannot believe that a diver as experienced as him would have blown up to the surface from 200 feet just because of an inflator malfunction. There has to be more to it than that.
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Yes, it does seem odd. I don't know any more of the details than that. There very well could be more to the story.
 
apitkin said:
I cannot believe that a diver as experienced as him would have blown up to the surface from 200 feet just because of an inflator malfunction. There has to be more to it than that.
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It wouldn't be the first time that a very experienced technical diver died as a result of a stuck inflator causing them to violate their physiological ceiling.

http://diver.net/bbs/messages2/14420.shtml

My deepest condolences to the family and friends.

Oh hey Andy, didn't see who I was replying to...
 
kensuf said:
It wouldn't be the first time that a very experienced technical diver died as a result of a stuck inflator causing them to violate their physiological ceiling.

http://diver.net/bbs/messages2/14420.shtml

My deepest condolences to the family and friends.

Oh hey Andy, didn't see who I was replying to...
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Looking back over the past 16 years there's a great acceptance of IWR than back in 2001 when Garrett died. Although Garrett may have 'known' he should go back down, I have definitely seen bent divers try to avoid returning to the water, or feel like they shouldn't bother, or various other physiological or psychological reasons choose not to. Buddies need to be prepared to be patient advocates when someone goes to the chamber, but they also need to assess the situation and not let their bent friend deny getting back in for missed deco or IWR if that's the best choice at the moment. It's hard to fault Claudia in her report because, yes you don't want two victims. It should have been surface support's job to insist on getting back in and doing at least some deco before transport to the chamber. Cause its almost assuredly going to be hours and hours before they recompress you. Over the last 15+ years, surface to chamber times (~5 hours in Garrett's case) have not declined and Mukilteo, WA is about as close to a chamber (Virginia Mason Hospital in Seattle has had a multiplace chamber and treated divers for decades) as you can get without it being on-site. And in many cases and areas time to treatment is worse now than it was in 2001.
 
kensuf said:
It wouldn't be the first time that a very experienced technical diver died as a result of a stuck inflator causing them to violate their physiological ceiling.

http://diver.net/bbs/messages2/14420.shtml

My deepest condolences to the family and friends.

Oh hey Andy, didn't see who I was replying to...
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Ken,

You just made my point. In the incident you quote, there clearly was more going on than just a stuck inflator. Maybe a stuck inflator is the final straw that turns an incident into a fatality, but I would propose that it's never the sole cause of the accident, at least where experienced divers are concerned.
 
I dunno, it doesnt take much of a change in depth to create a runaway ride to the surface. I did it once myself, and no amount of exhaust, dumping, whatever could I do about it.
 
Jeff Pack said:
I dunno, it doesnt take much of a change in depth to create a runaway ride to the surface. I did it once myself, and no amount of exhaust, dumping, whatever could I do about it.
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Ditto. I've had an inflator go into auto-inflate once, and it was terrifying. We teach and are taught the various things you can do in that situation (swim down/butt dump, grab onto the anchor line, disconnect inflation hose, burp drysuit, etc), but when mine went, I hit the surface before I could react effectively. Luckily I was farting around in the shallows, and didn't take a rocket ride from a significant depth or violate any deco obligations.

This topic actually reminds me of the other thread about imploding scooters. Everyone knows what should be done in that scenario, but it doesn't quite work out that way in real life.

Jim
 
Jeff Pack said:
I dunno, it doesnt take much of a change in depth to create a runaway ride to the surface. I did it once myself, and no amount of exhaust, dumping, whatever could I do about it.
Click to expand...

Yup, and even if you disconnect the inflator quickly, the initial ascent might be enough to start that feedback loop that keeps you rising. You could quickly outpace your ability to simultaneously dump the expanding gas in all three spaces (dry suit, counterlungs and wing).

One of the things that I do when rinsing out the wing is not to just fill it with fresh water and drain from the OPV, but run a bit of fresh water of the LP connector for the inflator hose. Ideally, this should be done sooner rather than later. Washing out salt water is easy. Washing out salt crystals once the wing has dried is much harder.
 
Not to go off topic but last saturday i watched a diver of 40 years experience blow up from only 70 ft, He was ok and it was a drysuit valve but along with this thread i decided to rebuild inflators on 2 seperate wings and was shocked to see the salt crystal build up in them, i always wash and submerge them in warm sudsy water and rinse in fresh clean water pushing all the buttons. It seems to be an item overlooked so if you folks get a chance dissasemble yours and take a look, you mght be suprised too! be safe and dive well.
 
I've had my wing go full on inflate, due to the button sticking, even quickly removing the hose (just like we are taught all those years ago in OW classes), wasn't enough to stop me hitting the surface (lucky only in 10m or so of water).

So can truly believe this could of been the cause :(
 
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