Posted by Chamber Day Committee on February 28, 2000 at 12:45:14:
CHAMBER DAY 2000
The annual Chamber Day event is Wednesday, May 3 this year - the 12th
annual. This year also marks the 25th anniversary of our Catalina Hyperbaric Chamber.
This event is successful due to massive support from the dive community,including the dive boats and crews (donating their time and fuel), dive shops and clubs (promoting the event and getting their divers involved), manufacturers (donating raffle items), individuals who volunteer their time to serve as divemasters for Chamber Day or chamber techs for volunteer year-round at our Chamber, and the Long Beach Aquarium of the Pacific (whose generous donation makes Chamber Evening a reality). Quite simply, Chamber Day is one day when everyone in the SoCal diving community pitches in for a worthy cause.
The reason we do all this is to raise funds to ensure the continued operation of the Catalina Hyperbaric Chamber. Although the Chamber gets some funding from L.A. County, they must still raise an enormous part of their budget on their own. Chamber Day represents the largest single outside source of funding for the Chamber.
As you (hopefully) know, hyperbaric chambers are the only way to treat
decompression illness or embolisms that may result from diving. And because our chamber is located on Catalina, it’s easily accessible from any of the other islands or even from shoreline beaches. And even though diving accidents are not an everyday occurrence, when one happens, the availability of a convenient hyperbaric chamber, any day of the week, any time of the day, all year round, can literally mean the difference between life or death, or the difference between being paralyzed for life or leading a normal life. Simply put, if our Catalina Chamber were forced to close, or trim back operations, a safety net for all divers would disappear.
That’s why your support of this event is so critical. In 1999, through Chamber Day, Chamber Evening, the Michael Kane $10K Challenge, and the daytime and evening raffles, we managed to raise $67,018 for our Chamber. And this year, we’d like to do even better. Read on for the details.