A Michigan woman is suing the state of Hawaii and a resort she and her husband stayed in after he died while snorkeling, allegedly from a little-known condition that she said every tourist needs to know about.
Patti Johnson and her husband Ray Johnson visited the islands in February 2022 just as they had numerous times before.
But on their last trip, Ray had difficulty breathing while snorkeling and surfaced for air off the coast of Maui.
He ended up dying on the beach at the age of 64 in what was later ruled a drowning. The issue for Patti was that her husband of 38 years was communicating before he took his final breath and was on shore.
She spoke to ABC News about what happened and offered an explanation for why she believes she lost the love of her life. She blamed a condition that many travelers might not know about.
Patti believes Ray succumbed to a condition called rapid onset pulmonary edema, or ROPE, for short.
In her lawsuit against the state, her hotel, the Hawaii Tourism Authority, and the Hawaii Visitors Convention Bureau, Patti alleges she and other tourists who fly to the state for vacations are not told about the dangers of ROPE – a condition that can prove deadly for people who snorkel after their bodies have been subjected to high altitudes.
Patti’s lawyer Jay Stuemke said he believes Ray died from the condition, which was explained by Dr. Meilan Han, the chief of pulmonary and critical care medicine at the University of Michigan.
“Patients or people who are out snorkeling will notice an increase in shortness of breath is one thing, but then they’ll also become confused,” Han said.
Did you know about this hazard?
According to Stuemke, the flight to Hawaii contributed to Ray’s death.
“What long haul flights do, is it has an effect on your lungs,” the attorney said. “After 3 days you are back to normal, but if you snorkel after that long flight there is a substantial increased risk of death.”
The Mayo Clinic says pulmonary edema is caused by “too much fluid in the lungs,” adding that the fluid “collects in the many air sacs in the lungs, making it difficult to breathe.”
According to Patti and her attorney, Ray might have avoided one of his favorite hobbies for a few days while his oxygen levels returned to normal but he did not know about ROPE.
Now, the widow said she wants everyone who flies to Hawaii to be made aware of the acute condition.
Patti also explained how confused she became when she watched her husband struggle for air and eventually die. She said he appeared confused and swam to shore with his head above the water.
“Soon they started yelling, call 911!” she said. “That’s when I ran to the beach. And I ran – I got onto the beach. They were pulling him out. His head snapped back and I believe at that point he was gone.”
A coroner found that Ray had drowned but that still does not add up for the grieving widow, she said.
”It didn’t make sense when I received the autopsy report that just said it drowning,” she told ABC News. “And I was like, I was watching him come in. When you’re drowning, I don’t think you’re making your way in. I don’t think you’re talking to the people you’re with.”
Patti said she wants people to be made aware of the possibility, no matter how remote, that snorkeling can be dangerous after air travel.
“After flying 10 hours, we would have waited 72 hours,” she said. “His lungs would have recovered from whatever being in a pressurized cabin does to your lungs.”
None of the respondents in Patti’s lawsuit had commented on her lawsuit as of Friday afternoon.
Between 2017 and 2019, the Hawaii State Department of Health and the Hawaii Tourism Authority established and funded a Snorkel Safety Study to look into unexplained or mysterious snorkeling deaths at its beaches.
The study found that “recent prolonged air travel may be a contributing factor” to ROPE.
