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Old 11-07-2013, 04:01 PM   #5
goldfinchs1
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Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Awendaw, SC
Posts: 91
Re: Woodville Karst Plain Project (WKPP) safety weekend

Quote:
Originally Posted by jadairiii View Post
The exercise assumed an unconscious diver. Regardless of cave or ocean there are lots of reasons a diver may have lost consciousness. And most of those reasons are not easily recognized underwater. OOA, Oxtox, hypercapnia, insulin shock, heart attack, stroke, etc. And some of those “ailments” the diver may regain consciousness as you ascend with the diver or still be breathing but unconscious. More to the point, in many cases you may be the only one able to rescue the diver upon surfacing, get him or her on the boat (to the beach or side of sinkhole), call for help and perform CPR.

The first consideration in any lifesaving situation, make sure the emergency responder (you) can remain safe, don’t endanger yourself during a rescue.
So, if you just shoot the diver to the surface like a lift bag you may add to their issues by:

1. Losing the victim on the surface due to conditions;
2. Shooting them into boat traffic or other overhead dangers;
3. They begin to regain conciseness, or start breathing but drown on the surface because no one is there to keep their head above water/wave/face up;
4. The airway could close and you could embolize them thus complicating matters 10 fold;
to name a few.

By bringing the victim up in a controlled ascent, you protect the emergency responder (you) by controlling your ascent and keeping the victim under control (keeping the reg in their mouth if that is how you found them) and protecting the airway. If they regain consciences on the way up you can still keep them under control and monitor them. Also, if there is a deco obligation you are both blowing off, there is a chance on the surface (or on the way up) you can get the dive master’s attention (or someone’s), pass them off and go back down and complete deco. If by chance they are breathing, you could actually do some minimal deco to protect you and still save the buddy.

But again, you may be it, so after controlled ascent, you surface properly (there is a trick to that also) get the victim to the boat/beach/side, remove their gear, get them stabilized, call for help and then begin CPR (if necessary)

But this assumes you are going to do what it takes to save your buddy. There is much more to this and I attempted to put down into a few paragraphs 2 days of life saving drills, lectures and recuses. But don’t hesitate to ask me anything else here or by pm, if I cannot answer it I can refer you to those that can.

Again, great info. I think it's very important to talk through these things. I'm still struggling with a certain scenario, however. We're in the technical diving forum, so in this scenario I'm assuming we're discussing deep diving with deco obligations. If you find your buddy unconscious, or he becomes unconscious while diving beside you, you cannot revive him underwater. The next thought is to bring him to the surface. If I'm coming from 200' and have a 15 minute ascent, my buddy is going to be dead by the time I get him to the surface if I take him with me on my controlled ascent. I understand you saying that he may become conscious, but I find that highly unlikely if he's breathing an open circuit system that requires draw from a regulator. I assume you could manually provide him with air through his regulator, but that would probably be futile since you can't hold his regulator in his mouth and form the seal necessary to prevent him from aspirating water. So that leaves us with a controlled ascent with no air and 15 minutes to the surface. Where I dive, surface traffic isn't a concern (usually very far off the coast with no company). At this point, the only benefit I see from doing a controlled ascent with the body is not losing it. I can prevent that by attaching a lift bag or safety sausage to him. Why would I want to endanger my ascent by holding on to dead weight and an uncontrollable buoyancy. The body will inevitably have gasses that blow up when ascending from 200,' especially with no lung capacity to exhale. This seems incredibly dangerous to save a corpse.

Thanks for your thoughts.
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