3 replies to this topic

[Bubble2Bubble]

Last weekend I invited a few divers to come up to where I live and go diving with me over at Broken Bow Lake in Oklahoma because its Clean and Clear water. anyway once we got to the dive site and started setting up our gear one of the divers told me that they had got there tanks filled at there local Firehouse. here are some quotes/comments from the divers.



comment... I knew it, they gave me a short fill I have 2500psi

comment... Yep me to 2500

comment... Hey this gas has a strange taste?

comment... mine to, its kind of oily tasting or worse?

comment... I cant believe our local firefighters would have to breath this in an emergency!

comment... Really ! when I get back home I will report this ASAP

comment... you wanna try a dive with this?

comment... well we have traveled a long way for this diving, lets try it and see.

comment... OK



I was just standing at the sidelines of this conversation and going

I said to the divers do you still want to go diving.



reply... Yes...Yes



OK then we will all dive in and go straight down to 30ft just below the thermal cline where the vis is very good and follow the bank east to a wall that drops off to 107ft and check out the wall and have fun. so we all descended and I was waiting at 30ft to meet up with the other two divers and after a minute went by and no divers I came back to the surface and the divers had aborted the dive because of the Bag Gas. This is probably a isolated case of a Firehouse not keeping/checking/maintaining the air compressor. There is no doubt in my mind that this issue was addressed last week and the compressor is putting out Grade E or better Gas. The point of this thread is to bring attention to all Rural, Small Town, Small City, Big City Fire Stations and Emergency Workers to doubled check your compressors or check the Gas/Air in the tanks you have ready in case of an Emergency.



Mike

[NJBerserker]

My instructor warned all of us during my OW about getting fills from firehouses. Apparently they are not as strict as divers are with there gas quality and such and that everything would be faaaaar from O2 compatable. I don't know if this is completely true or why it is, but that is the info I got. I don't doubt the validity however as all of the various local fire depts. have dive teams and as far as I know they all get their fills at the handful of local LDS because I see there tanks next to mine when I go to pick up.

Edited by NJBerserker, 19 July 2008 - 04:05 PM.

[WreckWench]

Great thread Bubski. Bad gas can easily happen due to a compressor filter not being changed properly vs not being changed at all. If its inserted upside down/backwards it will fail. It may have been as simple as this. Either way I'm glad they will be alerted before any firemen NEEDED the gas.

[scubafanatic]

....sounds similar to the recent BIG story over on Scubaboard about that Maldives liveaboard that managed to kill one diver and put a dozen others on the hospital ...carbon monoxide poisoning....all the divers were found floating unconscious on the surface...apparently Maldives has no official safety standards, also, to protect local jobs, they prohibit the hiring of 'foreigners' on the boats that might actually know what they're doing........needless to say, Maldives isn't on my short list of must-dive locations.

Karl