Bad dry suit diving death Glacier National Park

[LittleLebowski]

TGS

https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/03/us/glacier-national-park-scuba-diving-death-trnd/index.html

Link to legal filing (PDF) (https://www.scubaboard.com/community/attachments/1-mills-gentry-complaint-and-demand-for-jury-trial-pdf.657523/), long technical, horrible read.

[RoyGBiv]

Bad air, sounds like.

[LittleLebowski]

Updated OP with informative link.

[TGS]

Updated OP with informative link.

Thanks for tagging me.

That's pretty terrible, and to be honest I'm surprised it doesn't happen more often. PADI and the other tourism venture diving certification companies are basically pyramid schemes, selling people on C-cards (Certification cards) without any real training or competency. Most advanced open water divers I've met are patently unsafe in the water, and even most of the Master Divers I've met are similarly unaware of how poor their knowledge and skills are. No offense to any other divers here; I obviously wasn't born into competence, and had to work my way there.

Performing dives with equipment you're not certified on is not rare, at all. I was never "certified" in dry suit diving, even though I've made about 400 dives in dry suits to maximum bottoms times of 3 hours, and temperatures as low as 36*. I joined a group of technical divers and learned slowly from people who aren't making a buck off you, and we would perform training dives throughout the year (particularly late winter and spring time) in preparation for each diving season, teaching and practicing skills.

With that said, the defendants are toast. Egregious doesn't even begin to describe what was portrayed in the document. There's way too many variables they subjected her to; the training venue was completely inappropriate, and to combine learning various new skills for a person with that little dives into one dive is just simply unfathomable to me. On top of it all, they let her dive without the regulator being configured for dry suit diving. As you descend, you need to add gas to the suit in order to equalize the pressure, just like you need to add gas to the buoyancy compensator. As the pressure increases, the volume of air decreases, so you need to add more air. Simple. To allow someone to perform a dive without having a hookup for the valve.....I just can't even convey how fucked up that is. Criminal negligence, IMHO.

If someone did that to my wife, I'd probably murder them. That's like telling you, "sure, we can go for a ride in the airplane. Yeah, go sit on the wing without any harness or restraint, it'll be fine". Knowing what I know about diving, if I were the investigator I'd likely view that as reasonable suspicion they premeditated her murder for some nefarious reason.

[Odin Bravo One]

Dry suit diving isn’t something you do for shits and grins. As TGS mentioned, there are a plethora of different things that can go wrong........first of which is you’re diving in a fucking dry suit.

[RJ]

I am a retired PADI DM, and have taken that Dry Suit cert course. I am very familiar with the PADI program described in the filing document. Reading about that incident gave me chills.

I am so sorry that young lady lost her life. Those responsible should burn in Hell.

[Odin Bravo One]

I spent a few minutes underwater in my younger days, and there just aren’t many NAUI/PADI certified folks I’d consider for a dive buddy, let alone strap into a dry suit. There are a few....... but just like the firearms training industry, the accepted standard (NRA/NAUI/PADI) is some pretty weak chili as a metric for being proficient to the level of being safe.

[ccmdfd]

Wow, what a horrible read.

Sinking to the bottom of a big lake while panicking, not being able to breathe, and being crushed from the outside pressure.

So they took this eighteen-year-old girl, who had almost no diving experience, told her to go buy a second-hand drysuit which turned out to be missing a significant piece of equipment, didn't spend any time with her going over how the thing works, how to use it, and discovering that it was defective, and just letting her dive without a true buddy.

Sounds criminal to me.

[Cory]

The number of ways to die scuba diving is incredibly terrifying. The number of people who are careless and more than happy to facilitate your drowning death is more so.

I don't believe I will ever dive.

[Caballoflaco]

Wow, what a horrible read.

Sinking to the bottom of a big lake while panicking, not being able to breathe, and being crushed from the outside pressure.

So they took this eighteen-year-old girl, who had almost no diving experience, told her to go buy a second-hand drysuit which turned out to be missing a significant piece of equipment, didn't spend any time with her going over how the thing works, how to use it, and discovering that it was defective, and just letting her dive without a true buddy.

Sounds criminal to me.

That whole read was a Walmart parking lot carnival of fail. I’m pretty confident I would recognize that now and nope-out before I ever got into the water with those assholes, despite a lack knowledge on diving. However, 18yo me would have likely had no fucking clue and drowned as well. I’m just glad they managed to not kill the 14yo girl who was with them too, though making her help drag the body out was a cherry on top of their incompetence cake.

[TGS]

Wow, what a horrible read.

Sinking to the bottom of a big lake while panicking, not being able to breathe, and being crushed from the outside pressure.

So they took this eighteen-year-old girl, who had almost no diving experience, told her to go buy a second-hand drysuit which turned out to be missing a significant piece of equipment, didn't spend any time with her going over how the thing works, how to use it, and discovering that it was defective, and just letting her dive without a true buddy.

Sounds criminal to me.

Just to be clear, second hand drysuits are a common item on the market, and the hose likely wouldn't come with it. That part in itself isn't anything out of the ordinary or unethical.

Dive shops usually have bins of hoses of various lengths, and you'd buy the hose and just mount it yourself. The fittings are manipulated using common tools. Or, if you were new, the dive shop would take it in the back and mount the hose for you......takes about 30 seconds.

So, the equipment wasn't defective. It simply wasn't configured properly, and I cannot imagine why they would think she could go diving without the hookup. We usually travelled with spare hoses of various lengths, and it's something that the average group of divers using drysuits would likely be able to rectify on the spot. Outside the tropics/tourist areas, I didn't know anyone who didn't bring spare hoses......really sucks to have to cancel dives when a hose starts giving out, especially if you had driven a long way or paid money on a boat trip. Even if you didn't have the right length hose, chances are someone else in the group would have....again, which all just makes this all the more strange to me.

It's like showing up to a shooting match or class and nobody having a common spare bolt if you happened to forget yours and you sheared a lug....or even a spare magazine, or holster, etc.

[BigD]

Did you guys notice that the person that sold the second-hand dry suit is being sued as well?

I'm all for suing the dive shop and instructors into oblivion. (I know *PADI is a racket but don't know enough about their procedures/rules to have an opinion on how culpable they are in this.)

But if a dive shop refers one of their students to me to buy a dry suit...1) isn't it reasonable to think the student will be instructed on the use and 2) most importantly, it's not my job to vet people in the first place. Cars are dangerous, too. Guns are dangerous. Do I have to check their qualifications before selling?

If I understood correctly, the drysuit wasn't missing anything but rather was sold with a fitting that wasn't compatible with the equipment provided by the dive shop that the deceased was using. This was only discovered at the dive site, in freezing temps, as darkness approached, and the instructor made the error of not calling the dive. (Or was the hose/fittings not included? Even so, like TGS said, the hose is not the drysuit. A quick search shows that they seem to be sold online without the hose anyway. Correct me if I'm wrong. )

Besides possibly getting a judgment or settlement from the dry suit seller, is there another reason to include them in the lawsuit? Some angle that's helpful to the plaintiffs in other parts of the lawsuit?

(*I got my PADI open water in whatever the minimum was (5 or 6 dives?) and then rolled straight into the 'Advanced' course. I think I was an 'advanced' diver after 10 or 12 dives. I was not and still am not an 'advanced' diver even though PADI says I am. I always thought that was a joke and dangerously misleading.)

[Elwin]

Besides possibly getting a judgment or settlement from the dry suit seller, is there another reason to include them in the lawsuit? Some angle that's helpful to the plaintiffs in other parts of the lawsuit?

Just a guess based on my very minimal litigation experience so far. I suppose there’s some argument (not a good one as far as I know) to be made by the other defendants that the seller is liable or partially liable, which could support a claim that plaintiffs have failed to include a necessary party. Though I would think that the easier route would be going to hearing on that and telling the judge why including the seller is pointless. That party may get dismissed out early.

A lot of the (?) moments here are potentially due to the number of defendants and the likelihood that none of them like or trust each other, or share more than minimal common interests. My big question reading the petition was “why the hell hasn’t this settled before filing?” Granted that the petition is going to paint a picture in the plaintiffs’ best light, but still as pointed out by others here, this is egregious. My best guess is it’s going to trial (for now) because the defendants can’t reach enough of an agreement to decide who should pay what amount to add up to what is most likely a large and also justified settlement demand from plaintiffs.

Most likely, the defendants have each decided it’s better to play the “not me” card and see who gets slapped with a huge jury verdict. And to go back to the precious point, arguing for the inclusion of more defendants would help with that.

I could also be totally wrong. There are likely lawyers here with better knowledge than me.

[RJ]

The number of ways to die scuba diving is incredibly terrifying. The number of people who are careless and more than happy to facilitate your drowning death is more so.

I don't believe I will ever dive.

Cory I highly recommend you rethink this, if you feel at all comfortable. The vast majority of folks in the Scuba industry are professional and incredibly safety conscious. Are there assholes? Sure. This thread is a superb example, but it was by far not my experience. Scuba diving is like any other adventure sport; if you follow the rules, the risk of serious injury or death is significantly reduced.

I don't have the depth and breadth of experience of folks like Sean or TGS, with just a mere 400+ hours underwater as a recreational (air) diver. My diving started with a walk-in "try a dive" at Bob Soto's Dive Center on Grand Cayman Island in the early 90's. I have had some magical experiences. Hovering over a coral head teaming with micro-life; kneeling on a sandy bottom on a moonlit night as a 15' Manta Ray swooped past my dive light gobbling up Krill; slowly descending into the hold of the British WWII transport ship Thistlegorm in the Red Sea, past rows of Harley Davidson Motorcycles; and surveying the wreck of the U-352 Type VIIC U-boat off the coast of North Carolina, are some of the highlights.

[AKDoug]

Cory I highly recommend you rethink this, if you feel at all comfortable. The vast majority of folks in the Scuba industry are professional and incredibly safety conscious. Are there assholes? Sure. This thread is a superb example, but it was by far not my experience. Scuba diving is like any other adventure sport; if you follow the rules, the risk of serious injury or death is significantly reduced.

I don't have the depth and breadth of experience of folks like Sean or TGS, with just a mere 400+ hours underwater as a recreational (air) diver. My diving started with a walk-in "try a dive" at Bob Soto's Dive Center on Grand Cayman Island in the early 90's. I have had some magical experiences. Hovering over a coral head teaming with micro-life; kneeling on a sandy bottom on a moonlit night as a 15' Manta Ray swooped past my dive light gobbling up Krill; slowly descending into the hold of the British WWII transport ship Thistlegorm in the Red Sea, past rows of Harley Davidson Motorcycles; and surveying the wreck of the U-352 Type VIIC U-boat off the coast of North Carolina, are some of the highlights.
How do you determine a qualified place? Looks like all the places I can get instruction in my state are PADI affiliated.

[TGS]

How do you determine a qualified place? Looks like all the places I can get instruction in my state are PADI affiliated.

The traditional answer is Global Underwater Explorers (GUE). They'll start you off right from the beginning, and you won't get a c-card unless you're actually demonstrating competency in the right ways. PADI/NAUI/SSI/etc are all the same, and won't really ever get you there. The alternative method is to do PADI/SSI/NAUI whatevs to start out, but then take the GUE Diver Fundamentals course asap. It's open to everyone, and as opposed to being a "c-card" to let you do something, is basically entirely skills development. PADI et al have courses that are aimed at the same thing (I think PADI has one called "Buoyancy Perfection" or something), but they're really weak sauce.

GUE was the enterprise that really standardized on best practices early in the cave diving/technical diving scene. GUE divers had a reputation of being extremely snobby and their protocols are a bit strict and unnecessary in some regards. For instance, their protocols prohibit breathing air below 100fsw due to the effects of nitrogen narcosis, whereas the industry standard for recreational divers was 130fsw and my training with IANTD for normoxic trimix actually had us go to 180fsw under strict protocols to perform tests to measure our nitrogen narcosis effects at various depths. I was comfortable going to 140fsw on air, would "bounce" to 160, but in general was taking the IANTD triox course to use for below 140fsw. GUE, however, would mandate you use trimix/triox for anything below 100fsw, which frankly is fucking ludicrously conservative....and also crazy expensive, and would cut you out of a lot of recreational dive sites.

As cringe-worthy as I found GUE as a culture (it's almost a collective, like Crossfit drones), they'll get you the right training. In the recreational diving industry I'm not sure how you'll be able to guarantee you get the quality of training that GUE offers without going to GUE or getting into technical diving where you tend to select your instructor on a much more personal level. The skills they teach today are pretty standard throughout technical diving, but still not the recreational community, and GUE was the first and still the only agency I'd trust based on name to deliver that quality outside of technical diving. It's not just skills, either....it's an entirely different type of gear setup that 1) is actually more comfortable, and 2) is tenfold more efficient. The typical buoyancy compensator devices used in recreational diving are built as vests, and they force you into an upright or inclined position, which basically forces you to dive in bad technique/form. The average recreational diver has no awareness of how destructive they are, how over-weighted they are, and how out of balance they are. In addition, the equipment is set up in a way that actually makes it needlessly dangerous in numerous ways, with the length of the hoses, how the regulator is configured, etc. It doesn't work out well under pressure testing. The way we have our stuff configured in technical diving is because people kept dying using "conventional" gear and skills, and we decided (or, I should say our forefathers) found a better mousetrap. Everything from fins, masks, regulator setups, BCDs, lights etc in typical recreational diving are basically working against you.

Not to pick on RJ, but I'll just use his number as an example: I'd trust a GUE diver with 30 dives infinitesimally more than I'd ever trust a PADI/NAUI/SSI master diver with 400+ dives. There's a difference between doing something excellent 30 times over, versus doing something poorly 400 times over and basically getting a "Master Diver" c-card in exchange for giving them money and not much else of substance. That whole conscious competence vs unconscious incompetence thing. Just to make sure that ya'll understand I'm not picking on RJ......he likely has excellent in-water competence given when he started diving. The recreational diving industry was still holding people to standards back then, unlike the last 15 years where diving exploded as a tourist "attraction" and standards were thrown to the wayside in order to make a quick buck.


The number of ways to die scuba diving is incredibly terrifying. The number of people who are careless and more than happy to facilitate your drowning death is more so.

I don't believe I will ever dive.

I agree with RJ, but at the same time one of the reasons I refrained from diving in places like Indonesia, Thailand, etc is due to the surprising amount of people who are left at sea when the boat doesn't check they have all their passengers before pulling the hook and heading back to shore.

Diving is relatively safe when conducted properly. You need to take active ownership in your safety, however, and most recreational divers are more like cattle. I felt more safe doing solo-dives on my own in poor visibility, cold water, etc than being part of a recreational "herd".

[AKDoug]

The traditional answer is Global Underwater Explorers (GUE). They'll start you off right from the beginning, and you won't get a c-card unless you're actually demonstrating competency in the right ways. PADI/NAUI/SSI/etc are all the same, and won't really ever get you there. The alternative method is to do PADI/SSI/NAUI whatevs to start out, but then take the GUE Diver Fundamentals course asap. It's open to everyone, and as opposed to being a "c-card" to let you do something, is basically entirely skills development. PADI et al have courses that are aimed at the same thing (I think PADI has one called "Buoyancy Perfection" or something), but they're really weak sauce.

GUE was the enterprise that really standardized on best practices early in the cave diving/technical diving scene. GUE divers had a reputation of being extremely snobby and their protocols are a bit strict and unnecessary in some regards. For instance, their protocols prohibit breathing air below 100fsw due to the effects of nitrogen narcosis, whereas the industry standard for recreational divers was 130fsw and my training with IANTD for normoxic trimix actually had us go to 180fsw under strict protocols to perform tests to measure our nitrogen narcosis effects at various depths. I was comfortable going to 140fsw on air, would "bounce" to 160, but in general was taking the IANTD triox course to use for below 140fsw. GUE, however, would mandate you use trimix/triox for anything below 100fsw, which frankly is fucking ludicrously conservative....and also crazy expensive, and would cut you out of a lot of recreational dive sites.

As cringe-worthy as I found GUE as a culture (it's almost a collective, like Crossfit drones), they'll get you the right training. In the recreational diving industry I'm not sure how you'll be able to guarantee you get the quality of training that GUE offers without going to GUE or getting into technical diving where you tend to select your instructor on a much more personal level. The skills they teach today are pretty standard throughout technical diving, but still not the recreational community, and GUE was the first and still the only agency I'd trust based on name to deliver that quality outside of technical diving. It's not just skills, either....it's an entirely different type of gear setup that 1) is actually more comfortable, and 2) is tenfold more efficient. The typical buoyancy compensator devices used in recreational diving are built as vests, and they force you into an upright or inclined position, which basically forces you to dive in bad technique/form. The average recreational diver has no awareness of how destructive they are, how over-weighted they are, and how out of balance they are. In addition, the equipment is set up in a way that actually makes it needlessly dangerous in numerous ways, with the length of the hoses, how the regulator is configured, etc. It doesn't work out well under pressure testing. The way we have our stuff configured in technical diving is because people kept dying using "conventional" gear and skills, and we decided (or, I should say our forefathers) found a better mousetrap. Everything from fins, masks, regulator setups, BCDs, lights etc in typical recreational diving are basically working against you.

Not to pick on RJ, but I'll just use his number as an example: I'd trust a GUE diver with 30 dives infinitesimally more than I'd ever trust a PADI/NAUI/SSI master diver with 400+ dives. There's a difference between doing something excellent 30 times over, versus doing something poorly 400 times over and basically getting a "Master Diver" c-card in exchange for giving them money and not much else of substance. That whole conscious competence vs unconscious incompetence thing. Just to make sure that ya'll understand I'm not picking on RJ......he likely has excellent in-water competence given when he started diving. The recreational diving industry was still holding people to standards back then, unlike the last 15 years where diving exploded as a tourist "attraction" and standards were thrown to the wayside in order to make a quick buck.



I agree with RJ, but at the same time one of the reasons I refrained from diving in places like Indonesia, Thailand, etc is due to the surprising amount of people who are left at sea when the boat doesn't check they have all their passengers before pulling the hook and heading back to shore.

Diving is relatively safe when conducted properly. You need to take active ownership in your safety, however, and most recreational divers are more like cattle. I felt more safe doing solo-dives on my own in poor visibility, cold water, etc than being part of a recreational "herd".

Thanks for taking the time to make this excellent write up.

[LJP]

Diving is relatively safe when conducted properly. You need to take active ownership in your safety, however, and most recreational divers are more like cattle. I felt more safe doing solo-dives on my own in poor visibility, cold water, etc than being part of a recreational "herd".

This. TGS provided a wealth of wisdom in the above post.

Just so you know where I'm coming from, I'm a certified commercial air diver, TDI Trimix, SSI Divemaster, and was well on my way to becoming an instructor when kids came along and my diving career came to a screeching halt. The only way to get to a reasonable level of competence is with time in the water with solid people. I was extraordinarily blessed to have peripheral access to the NE Wreck diving community and association with some big names in the diving industry. My dive buddy worked for Bill Hamilton and Glenn Butler back in the day.

While GUE and DIR are bad words to some people, the principles and gear configurations are relevant to anyone that chooses to dive. Streamlined equipment setup and proper trim and weighting made all the difference in my evolution as a diver.

Diving a drysuit isn't necessarily difficult, but a fundamental understanding of the gas laws and equipment requirements and setup is key. I will confess that I have not read the entirety of the document linked in the OP, but nothing I've read so far engenders any sympathy for the defendants. Sad state of affairs with inexcusable behavior. My buddy and I have literally driven three hours to a dive site and then called the dive just because of a gut feeling that something wasn't right. Sounds like the people involved in this incident lacked the knowledge/confidence/maturity to make that call.

[Hambo]

Diving is relatively safe when conducted properly.

Except for the potential for beauty, being under water is the same as being in a burning building. With the right equipment and training, they're relatively safe, but both environments will kill you quickly if anything goes wrong. Anything I can't see from the surface will have to be seen on a big screen TV.

[RJ]

How do you determine a qualified place? Looks like all the places I can get instruction in my state are PADI affiliated.

A PADI five star Dive Center is "usually" a good bet. Same as you check out any business in these days of the internet; check ratings, see what kind of experiences others have had, word of mouth. AK being a smaller community perhaps you can connect up with a buddy who can steer you in the right direction?

All my training is through PADI; I only did one cert course through NAUI, a Deep Dive weekend at the Blue Grotto near Ocala FL. I don't know about SSI or other training organizations; but I'm probably out of date these days with what's offered.

Having said that, they don't call it "Put Another Dollar In" without a reason. It is a big business program, not unlike Amway or Crossfit or Pampered Chef; to make money, you need to be higher up in the pyramid, and this does not really help put the emphasis on the students, where it should be.

And I've seen a lot of students. After getting my basic, then AOW, then specialty courses, then Rescue Diver, I took the Divemaster course and starting to help out in classes. (My "Dry Suit" course consisted of two dives below the thermocline all the way to the outfall of the quarry; at 80 feet, measuring 38 fucking degrees. I learned 1) Dry Suits are a PITA and 2) I hate cold water diving. :))

Most of my non-recreational dives consisted of acting either as a "Safety Diver", or as an actual, insurance-carrying DM. This was in Haymarket Quarry in NoVa. I was usually the DM who got the "problem" students (can't clear their ears, carrying too much weight, struggling with buoyancy skills). Anyway, the point being I have helped with a lot of classes. For fun, I've been on a couple liveaboards in Cayman, and another out of Sharm-al-Shiek in the Red Sea. Plus a week on various NC wrecks, on the MS Olympus. And a bunch of other trips to Key West and various Caribbean islands. All that was over the last 20 years or so. I ended up selling all my equipment and tanks (8) to someone who could use them. My last dive was about five years ago, on a cruise ship, docked at Turks and Caicos, using rental gear.

As I mentioned to Cory, if you can swing it, I always recommended people travel somewhere nice to get their initial training. Going to the pool at a warm resort to do your initial water work, then stepping off a moored Dive boat just yards from shore into a clear blue ocean that you can see to the bottom, surrounded by beautiful coral and colorful fish, is magic. Although a Liveaboard can be pricey, the concept of "Eat / Sleep / Dive" is a good one, and you'll be a pretty good diver at the end of it. :)

[TGS]

Except for the potential for beauty, being under water is the same as being in a burning building. With the right equipment and training, they're relatively safe, but both environments will kill you quickly if anything goes wrong. Anything I can't see from the surface will have to be seen on a big screen TV.

Proper diving protocols create safety nets.

Unless you violate those safety nets, or are incompetent, it takes an incredibly unlikely cascading catastrophe to kill you.

For instance, in caves, we didn't carry just one light like open water divers.....we carried 3, and ended the dive if one failed; the other two were strictly backups.

We only used 1/3rd (maximum) of our gas supply, that way we had 1/3 on the way out and 1/3 in case of reserve. Sometimes we'd only use as little as 1/6th of our supply on the way in, for instance when diving a siphon (a cave that sucks in).

We had very clear navigation procedures and techniques, that were validated by you personally; in order to pass a full cave class, the instructor takes you off the line, shuts off all the lights, disorients you, and you have to find your way back. While this is the part where many students fail, the techniques work and their failures are due to their lack of capacity for stress management.

We padded our decompression times. Similarly in open water, the usual practice is to take a "safety stop" somewhere between 20-10 feet even if you are not conducting a decompression dive.

When switching gases, we had strict procedures on how to identify the correct regulator you need to switch to so you don't end up breathing the wrong gas for your depth and killing yourself; we'd also verify the bottle we're about to switch to visually buddy-to-buddy. I give you an "OK" when you show me the bottle and I watch you trace your hand from the bottle to the regulator and put it in your mouth....then you do the same thing for me. We don't start counting our time for that deco stop until we've both switched, thereby padding our decompression time even a little more.

If a hose or regulator blows out, we had double valves to isolate the failed regulator and preserve the rest of our gas supply; in addition, a 2nd regulator to use ourselves or to lend to our team mate. We practiced isolating these gas supplies in a crawl/walk/run nature, starting in the pool or quarry, then on actual dives, then on actual dives with the instructor introducing agitating stimuli.

With open water where you don't have a physical or physiological overhead, the risks become even less.....in most cases, even in catastrophic cascading failures, you can just go to the surface and likely end up okay, which is why the training tends to be so soft and imprecise. So, the thing is, the more you understand what the failures are, the more you understand that what you're saying isn't really true.

[AKDoug]

Thanks for the advice folks. Looks like diving is going to be like continuing my private pilots license. Lots of desire to be good at it, but not enough time to be good at it.

[Cheap Shot]

In case anyone wants to read further about this tragedy.

https://www.scubaboard.com/community/threads/suit-filed-in-case-of-girl-dead-boy-injured-at-glacier-national-park.607756/page-21

In addition to what has already been posted about diving skills and competent training in this thread, Scubaboard has many good discussions about what constitutes good instruction and good instructors.