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Irish Times fature into Nic Gotto death

  • 30-09-2003 10:46pm
    #1
    Peace
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,758 ✭✭✭


    Folks,

    I just sat down and read the article in todays Irish Times (Tues 30/09) which was giving further information regarding the inquest on the death of Nic Gotto.

    Has anyone read the feature? What did you think?

    Personally i think the irish times did an ok job...but they could have done a lot better.

    The one thing i did notice was that the article was very much slanted against the buddy inspiration as a diving apparatus. It quotes the Gotto family as being concerned regarding the fact that there has been 16 deaths in 5 years on the buddy inspiration.

    If you were too look back and count the number of Open Circuit deaths in the past five years i can guarantee it would tally up to a lot more than 16. Alomst once a month you can see in divernet news that yet another TriMix diver has been killed - and most of these deaths are on open circuit. IMO the buddy inspiration seems to be a decent peice of kit. I've never seen one in real life but i've read posts many time which praise it on the Rebreather section of www.scubaboard.com .

    One thing that stuck out like a sore thumb in the article but would probably have passed most readers by was this:
    He [David Crockford]* believed the failure of the system to be consistent with seawater leaking through the handset cracks. He also noted that no alarm had been heard before, during or after the rescue, which should indicate problem with the oxygen. The alarm on the gear as then manufactured did not indicate if there was a problem with carbon dioxide.

    So its believed there was a problem with the oxygen, but what was the problem. If the handsets were flodded would there be an alarm?? Also when the "metabolic event" occured Nic was seperated from his buddy [Tony O Manhony], so there may have been an alarm but it wasn't heard. Nic was found convulsing ,after loosing his mouth piece , in a cargo hold of the Kooloon Bridge but its unknow how long he was there for before he was spotted. Is it possible that there was an alarm but nobody heard it due to engine noise of passing boats or the dive boat over head?

    To be honest some of these questions may never be answered - i'm just saying that the Irish Times [Lorna Siggins author] made no real attempt to either voice or deal with them.


    * (Garda diver - it was not mentioned oif he had training on rebreathers or not)


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