Why it exists
The first minutes of a diving emergency are handled by whoever is standing there: a buddy, a boat hand, an instructor with a casualty on the deck. They are frightened, the boat is moving, and the phone has one bar or none.
What they need is not a library. It is the right number, the words to say down the line, and somewhere to write what happened while they still remember it.
- Call
- Oxygen on
- Say the words
- Write it down
So the whole thing is four verbs. Nothing renders in front of the phone numbers — no splash, no consent wall, no “I understand” button. That is enforced by a check that fails the build, not by good intentions.
What it will never do
Red lines, not preferences. Most of them are checked mechanically — a build script reads the source before every release and fails the build if one is crossed.
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01
It will never diagnose.
No scoring, no risk percentage, no dose or gas calculation, and no combining of signs into a suspected condition. No wording anywhere that says diagnose, triage or assess. The build fails if that maths appears in the code.
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02
It will never sell anything on a crisis screen.
No commercial link appears on any screen somebody reaches during an emergency.
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03
It will never require an account, a login or a network.
Once it has opened the first time, it works with no signal at all.
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04
It will never track you inside the app.
The app loads nothing external at all, and the Content-Security-Policy this site sends for
/app/permits no external origin. This website is different and says so in Privacy. -
05
It will never claim an endorsement it does not have.
No mark or badge appears anywhere unless permission exists for one. There is no language model anywhere in the crisis path either: cards, plain word search, big buttons.
Where the numbers come from
Diving emergency hotline numbers are shown as published by Divers Alert Network. National ambulance numbers are checked one by one against the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office travel-advice page for that country.
Every number carries the page it was checked against and the date it was checked, including the cached copy. A number that could not be checked is not listed at all — a plausible wrong number at two in the morning is worse than a blank line. No chamber number that a person has not dialled goes on a sheet: an unverified number is absent, not flagged.
DAN is not affiliated with this app. It has not reviewed it and has not endorsed it. DAN's own pages and tools are linked from inside the app, never copied, and no DAN mark appears anywhere here because no permission exists for one.
First-aid guidance reproduces published sources with the source shown on every step. Where a step has not yet been checked against a citation, the card says so at its foot. Full sources are in the app under Sources & terms.
Who makes it
First Minutes is made by Donarun Das, a technical diving instructor, as an individual rather than a company. It is free, it carries no advertising, and it is not for sale.
It is not an alternative to a hotline, an insurer or a physician, and it does not replace training. It is what happens in the minutes before those take over.
Corrections are the most useful thing you can send — especially a hotline number that has changed, which is the failure mode this project is most afraid of: hello@first-minutes.com.