The recovery team found Bill's body adjacent to the permanent line just a few hundred feet from the cave's exit. A forensic check of his equipment showed everything to be functioning properly, but his tanks were completely empty. Bill was found with some of his equipment removed, apparently discarded in the throes of panic as he realized that he would not survive the dive.
When cavediving one should use the thirds air supply rule. This is even more true when solo, though it's not clear, if 2 divers had done the same thing, if they wouldn't both have drowned. If the bit about "one-half of his tank" means he only had one, then he may have only been Intro certified - another disadvantage; and of course 400 PSI safety margin out of one tank is half the hunt-the-guideline time you get with 400PSI safety margin in two tanks. But the main problem is neither Intro certification, nor only having one tank, nor diving solo, but very bad air management coupled with losing the guideline.
HOWEVER, Lamar English and Bill Gavin saw what actually happened in those three cases - unlike GI - and they write as follows (though they don't know who the Tylenol killer was).
REPLY FROM GAVIN It is amazing how someone that wasn't there knows so much detail about what happened. Actually, it's not amazing because half of it's wrong. Here is what did happen. Sherwood had previously become entangled in the line while attempting to don a stage bottle. This was in large tunnel where we had left our first stage bottle and also had safety bottles in place. The plan on this and several previous dives was to recover your stage bottle if all was going well, but there were full bottles there for any emergency. Sherwood did not pick up a full bottle, nor did he need to. Anyway, Lamar untangled Sherwood, clipped his bottle on for him and we started heading out. I watched Lamar doing this and I can tell you that he definitely "stepped in, took control and acted decisively" as George puts it. We went a hundred feet through a bedding plane area that's low, but you can still scooter through it. We had Sherwood sandwiched between Lamar and me. Then we came to a six-foot vertical restriction. George said it was "nasty". How "nasty" is it? Big enough for one diver to pass through wearing 104's and three stage bottles. You just can't scooter through it. Somehow, behind me, Sherwood managed to break the line and suck it into his prop. Keep in mind we were only 1000 feet from our deco bottles and in an area that Sherwood had visited dozens of times before. This was like our back yard at that time. Yet, he managed to get tangled in the line once then break it a hundred feet later silting out Lamar in the process. Not knowing this, I passed through the restriction and moved out of the way. Suddenly I was being frantically flashed from behind. I went back and Sherwood was half way out of the restriction signaling out of gas. This surprised the hell out of me because I had tons of gas left. The dive had gone perfectly (other than Sherwood's brief entanglement) and I could not imagine why he would be out of gas. (It turned out, he wasn't. Sherwood had over 1000 psi in his 104's and gas in two out of three stage bottles.) I handed him my long hose (which he grabbed with both hands) and I started trying to figure out the best thing to do next. Visibility was getting worse and worse on my side of Sherwood and he couldn't move forward with me in his way. We were facing each other at this point and I couldn't easily turn around. I unclipped a stage bottle (which was about half full) turned on the valve, unclipped the regulator and handed it to him. I couldn't see him clearly by then, but after I handed him the bottle I saw my long hose drop toward me from out of the silt cloud. I figured he had the bottle and I needed to move out of his way. At this point I was hoping that Lamar had a better view of his problem than I did. I moved back about 10 feet and waited. While I was waiting I hooked up my scooter tow harness, figuring we were not going to want to waste any time. Meanwhile Lamar was in the process of untangling Sherwood for the second time. I guess this qualifies as "leaving a guy" according to George. I've shared gas with Sherwood from my doubles, given him one of my stage bottles and Lamar is untangling him for the second time in two minutes while I'm waiting ten feet away as visibility approaches zero. Not much later, I saw the glow off a light coming toward me. I turned and picked up my scooter, intending to swim to clear water. I figured Sherwood would follow me and we would start motoring once we got to larger tunnel. Then, I felt someone grab me and signal urgently to go. I couldn't swim like this so I hit the trigger and we took off, following a line that I could barely see. I assumed this was Sherwood and that Lamar was right behind us. My thought at that time was to get Sherwood to our decompression bottles, which were less than ten minutes away. I had switched to my long hose, expecting to have to hand it off during the exit. We got to clear water and things seemed to be going well. I was pleasantly surprised that Sherwood seemed to have gotten himself under control. As we got closer to our deco bottles I began to relax. Only when we got to the deco bottles did I realize Sherwood was missing.
In retrospect I made two assumptions that proved wrong. I assumed the light coming toward me was Sherwood and when grabbed from behind I assumed he needed a tow out. However, after agonizing analysis, I cannot see how this made any difference since he had already passed out for unknown reasons. We had absolutely no chance of dragging an unconscious diver to safety from that distance. Lamar knew that Sherwood was dead, but rather than stop and discuss it (a useless waste of time) he signaled me to get the hell out. Had I been correct in my assumptions then my actions would have given us the best chance to save his life.
FURTHER COMMENTS FROM LAMAR ENGLISH At the stage pickup just as I had clipped on my bottle, Bill flashed me and shined his light on Sherwood. Bill had drifted about 30 feet downstream while donning his stage. I saw Sherwood about ten feet away fumbling with his stage and the line. I unclipped from my scooter and was at him almost immediately. I almost went for my knife but did not. He was wrapped up pretty bad around the valves and first stages of his stage bottles. It took me some thirty to forty seconds to clear him and finish putting on his stage. He looked stressed. As soon as I gave the OK, Sherwood hit the trigger. Bill did also, staying ahead of him. I got my scooter and followed. Visibility in the restriction was poor and I was using my scooter in short bursts following the line. Visibility dropped to four feet and suddenly I found the line had ended, lying broken on the floor. I began searching for the other end of the line. I found it fifteen feet away when I came upon Sherwood halfway through the vertical restriction. I could see him from mid- thigh down. He was slowly kicking with both legs, the second stage regulator from his left outside stage bottle was caught on a projection, and his scooter was between his legs. The end of the line was through his propeller shroud and around the prop a few wraps. I cleared the line, un-snagged his second stage and signaled for him to go - two squeezes on the leg. He kicked once with each leg very slowly and then was still. I waited for 20-30 seconds and he had not moved at all, absolutely still. I reached out and grabbed his left leg just above the knee and squeezed like hell. There was no reaction at all. Nothing. Not even so much as a flinch. I checked my pressure gauge and I had over 1600 psi in my 104's. I ditched my scooter and two of my stages. I then unclipped Sherwood's scooter from him and pushed him ahead of me for a few feet until the cave widened enough for me to get beside him. He was dead. I couldn't believe it... I followed the line through the silt for a short distance and saw the glow of Bill's light shining my way through the silt. As I approached him he turned to continue our exit. I grabbed him by the fins then reached up for his crotch strap and signaled go. Bill started motoring and I tucked into position for the ride out.
REPLY FROM GAVIN I went back to recover Sherwood because he was a friend and it was the last thing I could do for him. When we were at McFaden's funeral Parker came to me and said they were asking for pallbearers. It terrified me, but Parker had tears in his eyes and said, "It's the last thing I can do for him". I grabbed a handle. That thought went through my mind when we were discussing Sherwood's recovery. I don't recall ever having the conversation that George describes. If I had talked to anyone it would have been Lamar or Bill Main who were and are like brothers to me. Even if something like that was said, what is the point? Sherwood's death was not caused by any failure on the part of Lamar or me as insinuated by George. As stated previously, the bottle that I gave Sherwood WAS about half full. My opinion is that he passed out while gasping for breath. For whatever reason he could not get gas into his lungs. When he dropped the second stage of my long hose I thought he had the stage bottle. As Lamar stated, Sherwood had been kicking, with his fins almost in the silt at the bottom of the restriction. This had blown out over him and me. I couldn't see him, couldn't see what if anything he was hung up on, but I sure thought he had gas (which in fact he did). It was several weeks before all the pieces of the puzzle emerged to form some kind of explanation. Only in hindsight did it seem clear that the two incidents, the first entanglement and then the broken line and second entanglement had pushed him into a state of panic that he could not recover from.
As mentioned earlier, Sherwood had helped Lamar and me with a body recovery two weeks before this dive. I hadn't seen or talked to him much during those two weeks. He seemed fine that morning, a little nervous, but not unusually so, considering we had a big dive ahead. I had spent a lot of time planning this dive, calculating air consumption, bottom times, deco gas requirements, etc. I knew we had everything in place. Unfortunately, Sherwood had apparently had a crisis of confidence. We found out later that he had been talking to other people about how badly the body recovery had affected him mentally. The night before this dive he didn't sleep well and waking early, asked his roommate to pray with him. Unfortunately, he didn't tell any of this to us. We found out several days later. The dive went like clockwork for 8000 feet in (adding 1000 feet of line) and 6000 feet out. Then, Sherwood had a couple of problems that should have been easily manageable and he came unraveled. One way or the other, Sherwood died of fear, whether it induced asthma or caused him to hyperventilate. Once panic progresses to a certain point in someone you cannot "take control" of it. Remember what I said about trying to assist a panicked diver? At some point it is going to get you killed, but we sure as hell tried. For George to talk about "brass balls" and "taking control" is arm chair quarter backing from someone who has never been in such a situation. Pitiful, really.
The only thing that (it seems to me who - I emphasise - wasn't there) might have been done differently by the would be rescuers is the second handoff of the stage bottle regulator in the (apparent) OOA situation. Gavin gave the long hose initially, followed it up with a spare stage bottle, and assumed the victim was breathing off the stage when he saw the long hose descend back to him out of the murk. Perhaps I learn from this that you can assume absolutely NOTHING about an OOA diver - not even that he has sense enough to grab regulator B before letting regulator A out of his mouth. If I ever see such a situation, therefore, I intend to believe nothing until I see the guy breathing off working regs, preferably all the way back to the entrance pool. So in the situation described above, I'd have to risk my life fighting up through the thick murk to a probably panicked diver, so as to get eye contact and see that second reg go into his mouth. All that with no guarantee of success. On what I read here, this would not have saved the unfortunate victim's life. He was already unconscious.
The main, grievous error was that the victim went cavediving in an unbalanced state of mind.
This business of being "off the line and not moving" is, I believe, a fairly sure sign of confusion, disorientation - which way is out? - and panic setting in. I've heard of at least one other occasion when it happened, but that time the victim survived due to good luck and persistence by his buddy. They were exiting a mainly-low sidemount passage and the buddy had to figure out that the victim had FORGOTTEN he had another, completely independent air supply in his second tank. He was frozen with terror and in an alcove ABOVE the line so his buddy missed him at first when he came back to look for him. Eventually though he found him - but the first tank was almost dry when buddy realised the air supply situation and persuaded the terrified victim to use his other reg.- guy had been missing for 20-25 minutes when the buddy found him. By that time the buddy probably did not have enough air for both of them.... but he thought he would try to find him one last time.... Afterwards the victim admitted he would have drowned right there, motionless, with an unused bottle at his hips, if the buddy hadn't rescued him. That's panic in action.
Finally the bit about involuntary ascent on the rescuer's part is only too true - it doesn't take all that much air in the victim's drysuit to make ascent inevitable regardless of how much you try to empty your own. British wreckdivers sometimes practise emptying the victim's drysuit as well as their own while ascending - obviously this requires the two to be in a "close embrace" sort of posture, not easy when cavediving.
Another point of interest is that no one above or in the water, including George, considered the fact that we might need help. The water level in the basin dropped two feet, the basin started swirling in a circle, flow from the spring run reversed and visibility in the cavern zone went to near zero. No one said, "Hmm, this could be a problem for Bill and Parker." No one, including George, "stepped in, took control, or acted decisively" to find or rescue us. Incredible. But, in a way I know why. This event was so unprecedented in our experience that none of us could fathom it. I assumed (and I think Parker did too) that the entire cavern zone had collapsed into a pile of rock. Had I known what had happened and that it was only sand we could have dug our way out in half the time we wasted at the blockage. People on the surface looked on in wonder at the behavior of the basin, but had nothing to associate it with. People in the water did not connect the bad visibility to a potential problem for Parker and me. Still, I don't blame anyone there for failing to grasp the significance of what they saw and I certainly don't blame myself for Parker's death. Sometimes you just have plain, damn, bad luck.
Later, discussions with other divers revealed that this type of event had occurred at Indian Springs before. Over a period of time the spring flow builds up the sand slope in the cavern until it reaches an unstable angle. All it needs is the right trigger to collapse. This type of event has also been witnessed at Wakulla Springs by divers like Wally Jenkins in the late 1950's. He personally told me the story of that day and it is also documented in Bob Burgess's book, The Cave Divers (page 91-93).
FURTHER COMMENTS FROM ENGLISH Regarding Bill McFaden's death, I have nothing to say - I was not there. Regarding the circumstances of Parker Turner's death - I have something to add, as I was on the other side of that restriction, as was George. For George to simply say "Parker Turner ran out of gas on him [Gavin] at Indian and died" insinuates that Bill was somehow negligent or even responsible for Parker's death. This conveniently leaves out some pertinent information. George and I had put in some deco bottles for Bill and Parker. We then did a dive upstream on scooters. Our dive went rather smoothly and I called it as our depth approached 150'. (We were on nitrox). The ride out was uneventful and we exited the cave through the restriction at 130' ascending into the cavern to begin decompression. We did a 4 minute forty foot stop then moved up to 30'. I went out to the left, near the deco trough, still inside the cavern. George, however, simply rose to the ceiling, vertical in the water, head in a small air pocket. I thought nothing of it. A few moments later I glanced back over at George who was 3 or 4 feet beneath the cavern ceiling, still vertical, but backstroking wildly with his arms as he was trying to escape from underneath a downpour of sand, rocks and debris from straight over his head. It was the damndest thing I had ever seen... I got my scooter and went well out into the basin, away from anything overhead. George did also. We watched sand literally pour out of the ceiling as if a dump truck was unloading through a 2 foot diameter hole in the cave ceiling. This went on for twenty or thirty more seconds. I had never seen anything like that in my life... Visibility deteriorated rapidly. Do I think this started the sand slide that blocked the restriction? Yes; SOMETHING started it... Do I think it was intentional or foreseeable in any way? No, I don't. It wasn't until some 40 minutes later, halfway into our 10 foot stop that any of us, (except Bill and Parker), had a clue that anything had occurred deeper in the system... I had written George a note "wonder how much line they laid?" He went to check and upon his return wrote "they're not there". Incredulous, I scootered back into the cave, past deco bottles at 70' and then at 110'. At 130' the floor and the ceiling met and the line just disappeared into sand and rock. I thought part of the cavern had collapsed... I surfaced immediately to get help digging. Motoring back into the cave, I noticed a bottle gone from 70' and one from 110', and at 130' I found Parker's doubles draped over the line, empty, manifold down, his primary light illuminating a spool of line that disappeared into a small opening to the right of the permanent line. Parker was not in his tanks... Was this 1991 tragedy Bill Gavin's fault? Absolutely NOT.
The body of 44-year-old Eddie Girvan was found on the bottom of the inland dive site at Tidenham, Gloucestershire, on Monday 24 May. His two diving companions raised the alarm.
Girvan, from Laleham, Middlesex, was reported to be diving on an Inspiration rebreather when the accident occurred. His two diving companions lost contact with him on a descent to 50 metres at the flooded quarry, which reaches over 70 metres in places. They returned to the surface, believing him to have aborted the dive, but realised that something had happened when they could not find him.
One of Girvan's buddies, Nick Gilbert, was airlifted to the hyperbaric chamber at Poole for treatment after returning to 50m to recover Girvan's body from the bottom while Adina Ochert stayed at the surface to summon help.
A post mortem examination carried out by consultant pathologist Dr Jeremy Uff, found that Girvan had died from asphyxiation. Most diving deaths are a result of drowning, and as Girvan was using a closed circuit rebreather this suggests that there was insufficient oxygen in the breathing loop. In a posting on the Inspiration list, Gilbert described how had found Girvan unconscious, with his rebreather handsets - which control the addition of oxygen into the breathing loop - not fully switched on.