Fire on dive boat Conception in CA

[ijdod]

US flagged passenger vessels are required to maintain a watch 24 hours a day when passengers are onboard. That person must be master or mate.

Aside from being awake, obviously, what does a watch entail?

 

[Wookie]

Aside from being awake, obviously, what does a watch entail?

Undefined by the Coast Guard., but as with all things, that person is ultimately responsible for everything that happens on the boat.

For instance, my mates would invariable wake my wife if anything was wrong, from a plugged pooper to the coffee pot overflowing, as the mate often had navigational duties, we moved from one place to another during the night.

Often the mate (or me, as master) would sit in the Captain's chair or at a galley bench and play facebook if we were in cell range, or read a book if not. There are a thousand pictures of me sitting in the captain's chair reading a book.

Edit. Good lord, my beard was red at one time.

 

[shoredivr]

Roy Hauser, who designed the Conception and commissioned its construction in 1981, suggested another. He said he thinks, based in part on footage he viewed of the wood-hulled boat being ravaged by fire, that the blaze started in the bunk area and spread so rapidly that the 34 people there could not get out.“The impression I got was that the fire was already too big to do anything,” Hansen said in an interview Wednesday.

[...]

“This had to have been, in my estimation, one of those lithium battery chargers,” Hauser told The Times. “This happened in the belly of the boat. Those people did not have a chance to get out: From stem to stern, that boat was burning.”

One of the more recent videos of the Conception berthing area seemed to show at least one electrical plug-in receptacle along the baseboard level below one of the single berths.

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

What other source of ignition could have caused this fire besides electricity?

 

[Dacuda]

Here is the LA Times article
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-09-05/what-caused-fire-aboard-the-conception

 

[Boiler_81]

Taking action on legitimate potential root causes does not require the investigation to be complete and a cause for this fire to be identified. I spent 35 years doing design engineering. When we identified a potential failure mode, mitigation was put in place. It doesn't matter that the failure hasn't yet occurred.

It seems as if the charging of batteries posses sufficient risk to prompt processes and procedures to deal with the risk associated with charging and storing these devices. I am certainly not sufficiently knowledgeable of marine architecture or battery charging to suggest what those processes and procedures should be. However, there are subject matter experts who can.

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

On the news this morning:
33 people recovered, 1 still missing.

 

[scubadada]

If this is a repeat, I apologize.... I might have missed this type of comment..

Has anyone personally tried to get out of a live aboard boat using the emergency hatch? Has anyone ever been involved in a practice drill, simular to a practice gatherer and doning your life jacket drill? I NEVER HAVE... MAYBE IT'S TIME...

Hi @DanBMW

On the Nautilus Explorer, I climbed the ladder and exited the emergency hatch into the dining room. I informed the crew ahead of time, so as not to surprise anyone. Interestingly, A couple of fellow passengers saw me doing this and decided it was a good thing to do. Perhaps passengers should be encouraged to try this early in their stay on a liveaboard. I have been significantly and further sensitized to safety features aboard liveaboards following this terrible tragedy. I am a considerably more adventuresome diver than my wife is, and do my liveaboard trips as a single. My wife has asked me to see and discuss the safety features on the Ferox, which I will be taking to Malpelo in 2020.

Also, see my previous post regarding safety orientation, donning PFD, and crew fire fighting drill Fire on dive boat Conception in CA

 

[Scuba-74]

What other source of ignition could have caused this fire besides electricity?

At 3am only a cigarette lighter (or a cigarette butt) and a lighting strike come to mind.

 

[cs4160]

After that picture, I now get the Wookie handle/username!