Conception trial begins

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Jumping into the water without ANY real attempt to put the fire out and attempting to rescue people and leave them in the inferno to roast as the boat's captain is an utterly cowardly and cruel act (key word here is "attempt"). Not training his crew to use the water hoses and to have the rudimentary skills to rescue and put fire out is simply gross negligence and criminal. It should have been a real and genuine attempt to put the fire out and rescue as many as they can rescue even if it were one person. Failing and being unsuccessful in their "real attempt" is something else but there should have been a real and genuine attempt with the captain in the lead. Other shortcomings mentioned just added to his sins. What a cowardly and cruel act of the captain not to do anything and just assume from the beginning that it was hopeless and be the first to jump into the water for his own safety.
 
A couple of others touched on this, but it's such an important point I'll ask directly now; given the circumstances described, even if Boylan had trained and drilled the crew so, and even if he had directed them to fight fire/attempt rescue during the event, is there any credible reason to think this would likely have saved any lives?

The watch stander might have first alerted the rest of the crew (literally the first duty of a watch stander to notify not to act), and then they could've fought the fire before it became too involved to fight with the onboard tools. They could've also possibly evacuated the pax from the bunks before they were trapped.

Jumping into the water without ANY real attempt to put the fire out and attempting to rescue people and leave them in the inferno to roast as the boat's captain is an utterly cowardly and cruel act (key word here is "attempt").

Most reports that the fire was between the crew in the wheelhouse and the fire fighting tools they would've needed to actually fight the fire. So their only option was to jump in the water and swim to the stern.
 
It was completely impossible for the crew to fight the fire at the point they discovered it. If it had been tied up at the dock next to a firehouse with fire engines and 8 or more trained fire fighters with bunker gear, scbas, and the ability to use multiple hoses to protect the attack team then maybe it could have been successfully fought.

But in the middle of the nowhere with no gear and no hoses? Nope.

The captain’s fault isn’t that he didn’t get his surviving crew killed or injured in a pointless attempt to fight a complely out of control fire, it’s that it was allowed to reach that state because he failed to have the legally required person on watch. And thay was his standard practice, this wasn’t ‘the one day’ that nobody was on watch.

The lack of any firefighting training etc is just a symptom of the issue, which is a disregard for his legally mandated safety responsibilities of the job of captain resulting in death in a forseeable disaster that the rules he ignored were designed to prevent.
 
A couple of others touched on this, but it's such an important point I'll ask directly now; given the circumstances described, even if Boylan had trained and drilled the crew so, and even if he had directed them to fight fire/attempt rescue during the event, is there any credible reason to think this would likely have saved any lives?

Also, had he remained on the boat and directed the crew to fight the fire and/or try to rescue passengers, would this have put pressure on them to stay longer and endanger themselves more? (All this would've been far different to think about in the middle of the disaster).

What I'm getting at is the idea that even if Boylan was negligent in not training and drilling the crew in fire fighting (and I don't know what legal obligations if any he had in that), I believe the prosecution would also need to show that specific negligence contributed to the fatalities. If it's negligence that was non-contributory to the outcome, it might be useful for making Boylan look bad.

I get that this still leaves the issue of the required roving night watch. I just want to put aside emotion, passion and the natural tendency to root for the favored side, and focus, accusation by accusation, on whether each point is valid or not.
When fighting a shipboard fire, as all of the old Navy men and women here will tell you, as soon as you spray fog on the fire, especially a Class A fire, you knock it's dick square in the dirt. I would walk through a blazing inferno with a high velocity fog nozzle with a 4' applicator over my shoulder. Without the applicator (T-boats aren't required to carry one), 2 nozzlemen side by side will protect each other in as little as shorts and a t-shirt. Turnouts also aren't required on a T-boat. The beauty of fog is that it pulls in fresh air from behind, so you have something to breath, as SCBA's aren't required on a T-boat.

I wont say that they could have saved any passengers, as Tom said, by the time the fire was discovered, the PAX were likely all deceased.

Including 2 of my friends, one being a Spree crewmember.
 
CAVEAT UP FRONT - As some of you may recall, I was peripherally involved in the analysis of the Conception fire and I'm friends with Glen Fritzler, the owner. I don't think I've ever met Jerry Boylan, the captain. One of my former students was among the people that died. That being said . . .

For a variety of reasons, I have avoided (up until now) commenting in this thread. There's no question that this tragedy was horrific. And I get it that human nature is such that we try to understand things by simplifying them so we can make sense of events and assign blame. But I also believe, as drrich2's post (#10) pointed out, that you have to look at cause-and-effect. Did this thing that was or wasn't done have an actual effect on the outcome?

Specifically, it seems to be accepted as fact if IF there had been a roving watchperson assigned and present, the fire WOULD have been put out &/or everyone WOULD have been saved. I certainly believe it's possible that it might have made some level of difference, but I've never believed that it's a slam-dunk conclusion that should be accepted as unassailable fact.

That notion of mine was driven home this morning when reading an article in the L.A. Times, part of which is copied below. The article talks about fires in Sheriff Department portable shooting ranges, which are basically tricked-out 50-foot tractor-trailers. In terms of size, materials used in construction, and stuff like that, it seems these are comparable to the salon/wheelhouse areas of the Conception. Here's what caught my eye:

After nearly three decades at the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, (Steven) Propster — then a deputy — knew this was one of his closest calls. It was the spring of 2019, and he and two co-workers had been testing a training device inside one of the department’s mobile shooting ranges when the trailer caught fire.

“It became a full-on inferno,” Propster told The Times . . .

. . . Propster and a few deputies at the Marina del Rey station decided to set up a training scenario to prepare for the possibility of an active shooter on a boat.

Propster, who’d previously worked in SWAT, said he suggested starting off the scenario with a flashbang trainer, a nonexplosive device that resembles another common tool in the law enforcement arsenal: a flashbang, or stun grenade.

A traditional flashbang is a type of explosive that’s typically not lethal and is used to disorient suspects with a bright flash and a loud bang. A flashbang trainer is a reusable version of the device that makes a loud noise but doesn’t contain any explosives . . .

But before setting off a loud noise in public and possibly causing panic, Propster wanted to try out the device in a more controlled setting to check how loud it really was. Since the range trailer had soundproofing, he said, he and the other deputies decided to test it out there.

The first time, Propster said, the device went off without a hitch. One of the other deputies suggested trying it a second time, without ear protection.

They heard the loud boom they expected. But then they saw a fizzle “somewhat like an old dynamite fuse,” Propster told internal affairs investigators at the time, according to a recording of the interview that he shared with The Times.

“A flame about the size of a large candle popped up,” he continued. “It was probably an inch high.”

One of the other deputies stomped out the flame with his foot, Propster told investigators. As soon as he did, two more flames popped up nearby — and he shouted for another deputy to bring a fire extinguisher.

“He doused it — but two seconds later, flames went running up the wall,” Propster told The Times. “We ran toward the door, and the flame began to swirl and burn everything and chase us out. It was like a movie.”

The three deputies in the trailer ran to the door and burst outside, narrowly escaping as the trailer went up in flames. Unspent ammunition started to pop and explode. When firefighters arrived, Propster said, they struggled to extinguish the blaze.

“It stayed hot for two days,” he said. “It reignited twice.”

So here you have people on-the-spot as a fire breaks out, they have fire-fighting equipment, and they not only can't control the blaze, but they are almost killed by it.

IF - and I want to re-emphasize the word IF - this is similar to what happened on the Conception, it calls into question whether or not a roving watchperson, even if they had discovered the fire right away, could have really made a difference, either in fighting the fire or having enough time to get people out of their bunks and to safety before the place became an inferno. I also recall reporting indicating once firefighters arrived on-scene with the Conception, they thought they had the fire knocked down and it re-ignited as well.

My point in sharing this is to re-emphasize that there are a lot of things that are being bandied about regarding this incident, including issues being presented at trial, that are presented as fact but which are supposition. There are really very few hard-and-fast facts that we know with certainty. The biggest are that we don't definitively know what time the fire started, we don't know where it started, and we don't know why it started. For those areas, there are multiple theories, all of which have different levels of plausibility, and all of which are impossible to definitively say are right or wrong. I would hope that we would all keep that in mind as this discussion continues and evolves.

(The full L.A. Times article can be read here. I'm not sure if it's behind a paywall or not: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-10-29/range-trailer-fires)
 
Specifically, it seems to be accepted as fact if IF there had been a roving watchperson assigned and present, the fire WOULD have been put out &/or everyone WOULD have been saved. I certainly believe it's possible that it might have made some level of difference, but I've never believed that it's a slam-dunk conclusion that should be accepted as unassailable fact.

A roving watch might not have prevented it, but we know for sure what happens without one. And having a roving night watch is not just a good idea but required. Thus

That notion of mine was driven home this morning when reading an article in the L.A. Times, part of which is copied below. The article talks about fires in Sheriff Department portable shooting ranges, which are basically tricked-out 50-foot tractor-trailers. In terms of size, materials used in construction, and stuff like that, it seems these are comparable to the salon/wheelhouse areas of the Conception. Here's what caught my eye:

I am pretty familiar with range fires, including causing them and putting them out. At indoor ranges they are extremely dangerous and spread quickly thanks to the unburnt powder throughout the range. I've seen videos of indoor ranges going up, it goes from zero to full involved in seconds, and burns extremely brightly. We were trained to don't even attempt to put it out if forward of the firing line.

Even with regular cleaning the surfaces will still a lot of powder residue on them, so explosive devices like a training FB should never be used at an indoor range, as while it doesn't have the flash charge the fuze/blank still produces a flame.

So I'm not sure it is an apt comparison, as I doubt that it would've gone up that quickly.
 
So I'm not sure it is an apt comparison, as I doubt that it would've gone up that quickly.
Don't be so quick to dismiss it. I've posted this video before and here it is again. This is from the Oak Ridge, (Tenn) Fire Department and demonstrates how flashover can occur in as little as three minutes. This one starts in a trash can.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtMmymOxdjc

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Jumping into the water without ANY real attempt to put the fire out and attempting to rescue people and leave them in the inferno to roast as the boat's captain . . .
I think you're missing a couple of very key points here:
1. He was radioing a mayday call to USCG as the other wheelhouse crew went down to the main deck.
............(This was at 3:14AM, minutes after they discovered the fire.)
2. The wheelhouse was literally on fire with flames licking at his feet.
3. As smoke filled the wheelhouse, his last words to USCG were, "I can't breathe."
4. Then he jumped.
5. His crew thought he was on fire &/or dead and one (or perhaps two of them) jumped in to help him.
6. He then, with the crew who were in the water, swam to the back and re-boarded the boat at the stern (that part of the boat was not yet on fire but salon wheelhouse were engulfed) to see what they could do.
7. Realizing they couldn't get to the fire equipment and feeling the situation at that point was hopeless, THAT'S when he called for the dinghy to be ready and told the crew to abandon ship.

So not quite just jumping into the water and swimming away as your sentence implies.
 
Don't be so quick to dismiss it. I've posted this video before and here it is again. This is from the Oak Ridge, (Tenn) Fire Department and demonstrates how flashover can occur in as little as three minutes. This one starts in a trash can.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtMmymOxdjc

Sure they can happen quickly, but in comparison to the videos we were shown of indoor range fires, it went from zero to everything on fire in seconds. I tried to find one online, we were shown it as part of an NRA class.

But the question is did his misconduct or negligence prevent the crew and pax from having a fighting chance of surviving.

From the DOJ
The charge of misconduct or neglect of ship officer contained in the new indictment alleges that Boylan – who “was responsible for the safety and security of the vessel, its crew, and its passengers” – failed his responsibilities in several ways, including by:

  • failing to have a night watch or roving patrol;
  • failing to conduct sufficient fire drills and crew training;
  • failing to provide firefighting instructions or directions to crewmembers after the fire started;
  • failing to use firefighting equipment, including a fire ax and fire extinguisher that were next to him in the wheelhouse, to fight the fire or attempt to rescue trapped passengers;
  • failing to “to perform any lifesaving or firefighting activities whatsoever at the time of the fire, even though he was uninjured”;
  • failing to use the boat’s public address system to warn passengers and crewmembers about the fire; and
  • becoming the first crewmember to abandon ship “even though 33 passengers and one crewmember were still alive and trapped below deck in the vessel’s bunkroom and in need of assistance to escape.”
To me the first two allegations are enough for me to convict. I'm not convinced that the rest of the allegations are misconduct or negligence; and I'm not sure about the characterization of his actions on the night of the fire.
 
If the vessel burned to the waterline, how can the ATF make any credible statement that the fire began in a trash can under a stairwell?
 
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