One Finnish rebreather diver died at Font Estramar, France 10.6.2017

plazma

plazma

Just add ice & water
The dive team released a report:

Descripition of a cave dive accident in Font Estramar, France 10.6.2017.

Team of 5 cave divers from Finland travelled to Southern France for a cave diving holiday. Plan was to spend 2 weeks in the region and dive caves that they had been diving already before.

9-10.6.2017 plan was to dive Font Estramar cave located in Salses-le-Château. First dive day was a setup day where all safety tanks are installed to the cave and check up for the conditons of water and line system. Second day was supposed to be the deep dive to approx. 200m depth. Team consisted from 2 deep divers, 2 support divers and from one surface person.

On the setup dive morning of friday 9.6.2017 maximum depth was 160m for the deep team and 70m for the support team. Total of 20 safety tanks were installed to various depths for the next day. Water conditions were good, clear visibility and 18 degree celsius temperature. After the dive, teams rested and started to prepare for next day.

Saturday 10.6.2017 deep diving team (Divers 1 and 2) started their decent approx. 09:00, during the decent they installed additional back-up rebreather to 100m. When they arrived to 200m depth, Diver 1 heard loud noise behind him, when turning around he saw that scooter of Diver 2 had imploded and was dragging Diver 2 deeper. Scooter is attached to the diver with a pulling cord and a clip, Diver 2 was not releasing the negative scooter and was trying agressively swim up. Diver 1 swam after him to help and was able to cut the towing cord in 214m depth and they stopped decending, imploded scooted continued to decend. Visibility went very bad during this event and divers had to look for the lost guide line, during their search they found themself in a dead end. After a quick search Diver 1 found the guide line and was able to help Diver 2 also to the line, but Diver 2 already suffered from reduced ability to work. Soon the situation escaled when Diver 2 got stuck on the loose guide lines. Diver 1 tried to cut the guide lines and told Diver 2 to calm dow, but he was already suffering from reduced level of consciousness and very soon he went unconscious. Diver 1 could not any more help his friend and was forced to leave in order to save himself.

Diver 1 started his decompression from 130m and total deco load was 450min at this point. Safety divers started their dive 100min after the deep team start, and when meeting Diver 1, they received the information what had happened. Diver 1 was escorted to shallow water and kept under a surveillance during the decompression. Message about the accident was brought up and surface person made the emergency call. Police and Fire department arrived before Diver 1 was surfaced and fire department divers took the safety diver responsibility for the rest of the decompression. Diver 1 finally surfaced after 500min of dive time in good physical health.

Investigation of the accident is now done by French military police, Gendarmerie.
 
Doubt a recovery will happen anytime soon. the number of divers who are capable of doing a successfull body recovery under challanging conditions below 200M can probably be counted worldwide on the fingers of one hand.

This just might be another case of divers advancing their skill sets too far/too fast, instead of doing it by taking years to advance with lots of small steps.
Ask yourselves, is any extreme dive worth the risk of killing yourself? So far, I have not dove in a cave that was worth losing my life to accomplish. I guess that that means that I'll never get my name in the record books, or on the obituary tables of DAN.

Michael
 
michael_fisch said:
Doubt a recovery will happen anytime soon. the number of divers who are capable of doing a successfull body recovery under challanging conditions below 200M can probably be counted worldwide on the fingers of one hand.

This just might be another case of divers advancing their skill sets too far/too fast, instead of doing it by taking years to advance with lots of small steps.
Ask yourselves, is any extreme dive worth the risk of killing yourself? So far, I have not dove in a cave that was worth losing my life to accomplish. I guess that that means that I'll never get my name in the record books, or on the obituary tables of DAN.

Michael
Click to expand...


Isn't it too soon to draw conclusions ? ( or maybe you know the divers ?)
Nobody mentions the divers skills, maybe they did take years and years to advance and they where skilled enough for the job but just had bad luck ! ?

Condolences to the team and the family.

Greetings,
David
 
Engelen D said:
Isn't it too soon to draw conclusions ? ( or maybe you know the divers ?)
Nobody mentions the divers skills, maybe they did take years and years to advance and they where skilled enough for the job but just had bad luck ! ?

Condolences to the team and the family.

Greetings,
David
Click to expand...

From what I have seen these divers had dived this site previously and
the accident appears to have been caused by equipment failure due,
at least in part, to the pressure involved.
It looks like a tragic accident that could not have been foreseen.
My sympathy to all involved.
 
My apologys David,
I don't know any of the divers, and no additional information other than that which was already posted here. But this has all the traits of eastern block divers a few years after the iron curtain disappeared. No blockages, freedom, and money to do anything that they wanted to. Unfortunately a lot of them paid for their mistakes with their lives. Slowly and safely advancing their skillsets just wasn't the way they wanted to operate at the time.

I too, lost an ex-buddy almost 2 years ago, but thankfully I was able to see it coming almost a year beforehand, back when I stopped diving with him. If your buddy's only purpose in life is to make every dive deeper-longer-harder than any other dive he/she has ever done, the only conclusion to draw is how much longer it can continue to go well.
In his case it stopped going well, and he'll never get another chance.

Since most people have a hard time learning from the mistakes of others, neither my ex buddy nor the unfortunate diver who lost his life on Saturday will be the last divers to die of taking big leaps instead of small steps. They were good, but they were just not good enough!

Michael
 
Hi Michael ,

No apology's needed!!! Everyone can have his own opinion !
You also have a lot off valid points, it's just that I think we should not judge if we don't know the facts ( we shouldn't even if we do know ) and on the internet things go fast.

It's true some go to fast and skip the small steps it takes to learn specific skills....but a small step for one person can be a big one for another and the other way around.
Also it where Finisch divers, not Russian ( which doesn't really matter either)!
I have seen the documentary about the Finnish divers and the Plura accident....seemed very good divers to me ... looked like they trained a lot. But I don't know them so I can't say for sure. But just trying to say not all divers from " behind the curtain" throw in money and skip the learning curve.

And then my opinion is off course worth what you payed for it ;)

Greetings
David
 
One of the postings on ScubaBoard mentions that the divers on this expedition lost a buddy on an wreck expedition off Tallinn back around in 2012-2013 and also were involved in the Plura Cave dive with 2 fatalities back in Feb 2014, I hope it's not true, but if it is If so that's a a very steep learning curve - something close to playing Russian Roulette several times until the hammer doesn't come down on an empty chamber. Even though my ex buddy had a similar mindset, it isn't something that I want to understand or admire.

Michael
 
A recovery operation start today. I think they do a first dive for found the body and after they have a brainstorming for decide to extract the body and how.
The philosophy off the SSF( french cave rescue team) is to never let a victim behind .
But this time it's very complicated and dangerous.
 
la philoche said:
A recovery operation start today. I think they do a first dive for found the body and after they have a brainstorming for decide to extract the body and how.
The philosophy off the SSF( french cave rescue team) is to never let a victim behind .
But this time it's very complicated and dangerous.
Click to expand...

Please share more information on the process once you have it.
Many thanks,
Randy
 
The Bonex Reference RS has 3 different depth ratings depending on which thickness of tube body is ordered. They are 150, 200 and 250 meters. I have no idea what brand or model of DPV this Finish diver was using.
 
Very sad story for everyone involved and those that knew him. I can not imagine having to do that much deco knowing your dive buddy was still down there. I hope they can find some peace. I briefly met the deceased at Ojamo Mine in Finland. He seemed like a great guy.
I do not know anything more about his diving background or the accident than what was posted above. That being said I make an attempt to learn something from every accident report I read and evaluate my own diving. Lately I have been lazy about putting my line cutter on my computer strap where I find it easy to locate and deploy rapidly if needed. I have been lazy because I have kept switching CCRs and got tired of putting it on and off the strap. After reading this I will be more adamant about sticking to my standard configuration so that if I find myself in a difficult situation, like what lead to this event, I will have the best chance at dealing with it.
 
I'm a cave diver and i think it's not the most robust material for this use. I like carbon for my bike frame , but for a dpv i'm not sure.
When you use a dpv in small cave it's an aggressive place. I'm not dive in mexico, here the stone win.
I know 2 problems at depth with bonex (ok, I'm know other problems with other brands), but I have friends who use bonex for incredible dive and are totally confident with it ,so it's just my personal opinion and we don't know the dpv use for this dive.
 
Actually, in Europe you have a terrific inflation for deep cave dive. You have some places, very easy to access where you could dive very deep easily.
This accident is not a surprise, dramatic, but previsible.
The accident is in the "puits du loukoum géant"
Max depth of the cave 264 meters ( diver xavier méniscus)
Font%20Estramar%20plan%20leger.JPG
 
Randy Thornton said:
The Bonex Reference RS has 3 different depth ratings depending on which thickness of tube body is ordered. They are 150, 200 and 250 meters. I have no idea what brand or model of DPV this Finish diver was using.
Click to expand...
How do I tell which one I have?
 
DSix36 said:
How do I tell which one I have?
Click to expand...
Yours is 200M. You can tell because on the reference the carbon tube is flush with nose cone. On the 200M Discovery Tube it has to be a little thicker and you can feel a small lip where nose cone meets up with the tube.
 
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