The Incident Pit

The Incident Pit

“An incident pit is conceptual pit with sides that become steeper over time and with each new incident until a point of no return is reached. As time moves forward, seemingly innocuous incidents push a situation further toward a bad situation and escape from the incident pit becomes more difficult. An incident pit may or may not have a point of no return.

It is a slang term used by divers, as well as engineers, medical personnel, and technology management personnel, to describe these situations and more importantly to avoid becoming ensnared.”

Ok so that’s a definition, but in diving terms allow me give an example.-

Two trained divers decide to dive a wreck, for arguments sake we’ll call it HMS Swanage. They decide they will only dive to the top of the wreck. They do their buddy and kit checks and jump in. The first diver remembers he’s left his spare diving mask on the boat, but decides “...well it’s a shallow dive and we’re in the water so let’s just get cracking.” The chap has just entered the Incident Pit and what’s more he’s unknowlingly dragged his mate in with him.

Twenty minutes into a dive and they are distracted by a large dog fish which they follow around for ten minutes; they’re so interested that they start to forget to regularly check their air gauges. Slipping deeper into the Incident Pit – but they could easily stop what they are doing. They come across a large hole in the wreck and one decides to swim deeper and go inside, the other stays outside . Well inside the Incident Pit now. In the scrabble to get in the hole the second diver accidently kicks the first diver’s mask off.

So we now have one diver in the wreck and one swimming alongside the wreck superstructure with no mask. Some good choices at this point and they might still be able to climb out of the Incident Pit

Most divers are trained for this and naturally the first diver reaches for his spare mask to remember it is on the boat.

A bit flustered he loses some buoyancy and sinks slightly deeper. He has problems reading his gauges and keeps sinking. More flustered he tries to fill his jacket with air and over inflates it. Critical Point Suddenly he is ascending quickly, and more quickly as the gas expands and he accelerates towards the surface, he hasn’t got time to check his ascent and misses his decompression stop. He comes to the surface with the bends. He’s out of the Incident Pit? No chance.

Meanwhile his mate is in the wreck kicking up silt, he turns around and finds the first diver has disappeared so goes deeper into the wreck to find him. It’s darker and there’s more silt. Before long he has no visibility, and when he checks his air he sees he is running out. Point of no return probably?

The Cox of the dive boat on the surface has a problem. He’s now got one diver on the surface with the bends (decompression sickness) and one diver missing. The emergency call goes out on Channel 16 VHF to Portland Coastguard who being the local know where they are.

.................

From the above you can see that even the most innocuous choices/ decisions / actions /events have a knock on affect which incrementally increase the risk until there is a real threat to life. Often when you get to that point there are some big decisions to be made; or is it simply too late?

Should the diver have gone back for his mask ? Not necessarily.

Should they have chased the dogfish? Maybe

Should they have stuck to the dive plan and not go in the wreck? Definitely

Should the first diver took stock of the situation, remained calm etc etc..

So many questions, choices.....The bottom line is recognizing very early on when you have fallen into the Incident Pit, the earlier you spot the easier to get out.

I suppose you’re wondering about them divers. Happy ending or sad? It’s Easter and this is not BBC 1's naff Casualty programme so let’s have a happy outcome...... In this scenario the first diver is airlifted by Coastguard Helicopter to the decompression chamber and makes a full recovery.

The second diver made a good decision before going to the wreck. Critical Intervention. He clipped his reel to the outside of the wreck so he just follows the string back to the opening and then ascends normally to the surface.