Posted by Gosford on January 31, 2005 at 14:43:02:
In Reply to: 100% wrong (IMHO) posted by Ken Kurtis on January 30, 2005 at 22:23:11:
Ken, I repeat:
As much as I believe that this suit is BS, nobody can argue with the fact that if the DM and/or Ray had done their jobs conscientiously and correctly, none of this would have happened.
Your analogy is interesting, but non applicable as far as I see it.
You wrote:
You need to look at the timeline in this incident.
As I recall (times approximate):
8:30AM - Dan enters with buddies
8:31 - Dan loses buddies.
8:32 - Dan descends to 100+ looking for buddies.
8:32-8:45ish - Dan loses visual contact with the rig and swims in the blue trying to figure out where he is.
8:45 - Dan surfaces. By own estimation he is 400 yards away. Dan now becomes Drifting Dan and quickly loses sight of the boat in the fog.
8:45-9:00 - Dan continues to drift, another (my esitmate) 1/4 mile putting him roughly half a mile downcurrent from the boat . . . in the fog.
So let's just stop right here. Which part of this so far is NOT of Dan's doing?
I concur, generally. But, the buddies SHOULD have reported that they returned missing one of their team. Not dummy Dan’s fault, but the dummy buddies.
Then you wrote:
And even if the roll call HAD been done correctly, there's no way to say with any degree of certainty that he definitely would have been found any earlier than he was. Maybe, maybe not.
I definitely have to disagree with this. Had a proper roll call and accounting been done, and the missing dude detected, a down-current search probably would have discovered dummy Dan and opposed to turning him into Driftin’ Dan.
Guess-ta-mate a 1 knot current. Even if it was an hour (not likely) before the dummy was discovered missing, that’s at max, a mile to mile-and-a half to search. As opposed to missing the dumb (now drifting) dude on the check-in at the rig, and THEN, logging him back into the water on the Ace-1, eight miles away and starting the search in the wrong part of the ocean! The size of your search area has exponentially increased. Come on Ken, you REALLY can’t believe the search would have been the same on the rig as on the Ace-1 site. You say thing like that and your credibility will go the way of dummy Dan’s.
With statements like that, you sound like if on any dive-boat a diver gets in trouble, whether through inexperience, equipment failure, shark attack, homicide by buddy, stupidity or bad karma, that boat and crew have no responsibility to their (paying) passenger in making sure he/she (or their body) gets brought back to the boat.
I’m SURE you don’t mean THAT.
So, again I suggest (IMHO):
The buddies, the DM and Ray BLEW IT!
They had a responsibility to get Driftin Dan to the dive spots, and get him (or at least his body) back home. If Dan had killed himself in the water, the boat would still have had the responsibility to find him and bring him back (along with the notification of the appropriate emergency services)
They didn’t do that, and that is THEIR fault, not the jerk who drifted away.
But a $ 4 million fault – I don’t think so.
Thais should make a fun episode for "The Practice" ;)
Gos