What was suppose to be a nice day at the beach ..

It was a beautiful November day and the girls and I decided to join Mitch at Whycliff Park ... he would go diving and we'd play on the beach and pick up sea glass. Seemed like reasonable plan. Not 10 minutes after the 6 divers from our group submerged, on the other side of the bay another diver was yelling for 911 - his buddy was foaming from the mouth and was completely unresponsive. I gave the girls my camera and quickly ran over to where he would be coming ashore. It seemed a bit unreal ... and still does. It seemed like forever as I waited as the two of them had been diving out by the island. As he neared, myself and 3 other ladies jumped into the water to pull him onto shore as his buddy was completely exhausted. I was able to get his BCD unclipped and we tried to haul him up onto the shore. He was a big guy and it ended up taking about 5 people to move him onto the beach. From there one of the ladies indicated she was trained in CPR, and another lady who said she was a doctor took over. The guy who said he was the rescue diver just stood there ..... I guess he only had the paper but had never had to use what he had learned. Water and vomit filled the diver's lungs .... at this point I moved out of the way as there were people who knew what they were doing. Sadly even with the effort of these people, and later the paramedics, I don't hold out much hope for this man. The entire park ended up being filled with fire, ambulances, and police .... probably due to the fact that at least 3 or 4 different people phoned 911. The paramedics finally arrived and continued CPR for at least another 20 minutes and then the diver was loaded onto the medivac helicopter that had landed in the park. Supposedly they had felt a pulse and were doing what they can ... one of the police officers had indicated that patients aren't put into the helicopter unless there was a pulse. After the amount of time that he was in the water unresponsive along with all the CPR ... I was quite surprised.

This was not at all the beach experience I was hoping for ... and of course the girls were right there watching it all. They seem OK but I'm sure we'll be having some talks over the next few days as it truly sets in what happened. I'm glad I was able to assist but as always, am thinking about what I could have done differently. Called 911 when I first heard what I thought was a call for help, told the ladies to roll him over first to get the water out of his lungs ....etc, etc none of which would have probably made a difference.

When our group surfaced half an hour later, I felt great relief as I counted all 6 heads. Even being shook up about this I've given Mitch the OK to dive next weekend in Dodd's Narrows ... the only requirement is that he gets to phone me when he gets out of the water after each dive. Seems fair.

Life is precious ... don't waste it ....


Update: His name was Rick Musgrave and he was a 61 year old dive instructor ...he passed away on Sunday.