09/01/2024 – 10/01/2024 Panic
During my twenty-four years of serving as a peace officer, I never experienced condition black (uncontrolled panic.) Sure, I’ve experienced fear, concern, confusion, and adrenaline dumps but never actual panic. I‘ve always considered myself to be cool, calm, and collective under extreme pressure. On October, 27th 2022, I experienced uncontrolled panic for the first time. It wasn’t a result of one thing, but rather a culmination of poor decisions and lack of training that eventually came together as explained in the following diving incident.
I, along with Jon and Terry were at Tioga mine pit for an afternoon dive. Our plan involved diving along a vertical rock wall and then spending some time looking for a GoPro camera that Terry had dropped in a recent dive. I was equipped with a full dry suit, redundant air supply, extra mask, redundant computer, dive light, and other needed accessories. Other than being overcast and cloudy out, there were no weather concerns.
At approximately 1737 hours, we began our decent. The visibility was approximately twenty feet and it was darker than normal due to the lack of sunlight. I immediately started to become irritated with a small leak that was coming from my mask skirt. I only had descended to approximately thirty feet and hadn’t reached the edge of the vertical rock wall yet, so I decided to deal with the leak later. After reaching the edge of the wall at around fifty feet, I excitedly went over and began my decent down the side of the wall to a planned depth of one hundred feet. I later found my dive computer had recorded the water temperature to be forty-four degrees. Yet even in the cold water, I was perfectly warm and snug in my dry suit…except for that irritating leak in my mask. I now was nine minutes and thirty-six seconds into the dive, at approximately 105 feet deep, and was roughly seven feet away from the face of the wall. Without giving it any forethought, I decided I had enough of the irritating mask and pulled it off my face with the intention of redonning it to fix the leak.
Cold water hit my face and it felt like getting hit with a hammer in the middle of my eyes! I immediately felt the cold-water shock response. Sudden, rapid increase in breathing, heart rate and blood pressure. This also made me involuntarily gasp making me believe I couldn’t get enough air from my regulator. While I was gasping for air, I tried to replace my mask and make a seal. The mask skirt felt stiff in the cold water and I clumsily fumbled with it using my dry gloves. I was trying to make a seal against my Neoprene hood that had not been properly trimmed. I failed to make any kind of seal and couldn’t see anything but dark gray. I was too far away from the vertical rock wall to physically touch it and at this point didn’t even know what direction the wall was. I then started to feel vertigo and couldn’t tell if I was descending or ascending due to lack of any kind of buoyancy control.
At this moment, I believed I couldn’t get enough air, couldn’t see anything, felt I was falling into the abyss beyond no decompression limits, and I wouldn’t be able to control an assent due to lack of any kind of reference. Absolute pure panic hit and fight or flight took control. I choose flight! I slammed down on my dry suit inflator valve and started screaming into my regulator. I took the rocket ride all the way from 105.1 feet to the surface!
Fortunately, I’ve had enough training that I involuntarily breathed out by way of screaming into my regulator and flared my body the best I could during my assent. After breaking the surface, I burped out a bunch of expanded air from my lungs. I would later realize how fortunate I was that I had just started my deep dive and hadn’t had enough time to build up nitrogen.
The following is a list of reasons for why I eventually ended up panicking;
• Did not address leaking mask seal at the beginning of dive when first noticed.
• Had not practiced mask removal/replacement recently.
• Have only practiced mask replacement in a warm pool while kneeling on the floor.
• Neoprene hood had not been properly trimmed for face and fit for mask seal.
• Did not stop to think what were the consequences of removing my mask at 105 feet in cold water.
• Arrogantly thought I would have no problems because I’m a professional and have done this in the past.
• Did not prepare to maintain proper buoyancy due to the fact I was against a rock wall that plunges deeper than no decompression dive limits.
• Performed mask removal well away from face of wall and lost visibility of wall resulting in nothing to feel or see to orientate myself as to my location.
• All of this resulted in vertigo.
• The cold water made the silicone skit of my mask feel ridged and harder to seal.
• Never practiced mask replacement with dry gloves.
• Terry didn’t do a deep dive and Jon was not by me.
In conclusion, I found the following definition for ‘Condition Black’ in the public domain of the internet, “You are in a blind state of panic where you are unable to react to the situation because you have developed neither the inner tools nor the outer skills with which to react. (e.g.: It happens, you had no raised awareness it was coming, are unprepared, unaware, untrained, and under their control and influence”.)
End of blog. Thank you for reading!
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