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T
he day started like any other June day. It
was warm, a little windy and perfect for
diving one of our favorite training sites:
Lake Mohave, Ariz. Our instructor
team was teaching three classes that
morning — Open Water Diver, Peak
Performance Buoyancy and Underwater Navigator —
and we had a productive morning of dive training. After
successfully completing the certification dives, a group
of nine of us decided to delay packing up our gear and
instead celebrate with a dive for fun. We headed to the
site of a sunken cabin cruiser two coves over.
After a short hike in full gear over a couple of small
rises in the desert, we arrived at the entry point. As soon
as we got there we heard yelling — a woman floating
in an inner tube a short distance offshore was clearly in
some kind of distress. A member of our group swam
over to assess the situation and learned that someone
had gone underwater and had not come back up.
Our training kicked in. One member of our group
returned to our base camp to phone for emergency
assistance, two swam to assist the woman and get
a better understanding of what had happened, and
the rest descended to conduct a search pattern. Five
minutes into our search I discovered an unresponsive
man on the bottom in approximately 40 feet of water.
As I approached him I formulated what I would do
when I surfaced with him, mentally running through
the countless scenarios that have unfolded in the
Rescue Diver courses I’ve taught.
When I reached the man I grasped him, brought
him to the surface, held his head in a way that would
ensure his airway was open and began to administer
rescue breaths as I swam with him to the closest point
on shore. The rest of the team helped move him onto a
flat part of the rocky ground. One instructor deployed
a pocket mask that he always carries in his BCD, and
we immediately began CPR. Every couple of cycles we
shifted responsibility for compressions and ventilations
among the rescuers — it’s exhausting to keep up
effective CPR as the adrenaline begins to run low. We
continued performing CPR for 20 minutes while we
waited for the arrival of emergency medical services.
The National Park Service had dispatched a couple of
boats, and we placed the patient aboard one of them so
he could be moved back across the cove to where the fire
department paramedics could take over care. They placed
him into a helicopter for transport to the hospital.
By the time the ordeal was mostly over, one of our
divers started having some breathing issues due to
By Curtis Snaper
RESEARCH, EDUCATION & MEDICINE
SKILLS IN ACTION
Teamwork and Training
58
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SPRING 2016
DENNIS LIBERSON