Conception Captain Found Guilty of Manslaughter

[boulderjohn]

I wonder if things would be different today. In the US at least, divers are quite a bit older and have a little more money on average than back then. I know I'd be happy to pay extra for more space and included nitrox. The beer and soda wouldn't matter to me as I rarely drink either.

I think what is different today is that this fire happened, followed soon after by a similar fire on the Red Sea. That has people thinking, and fire safety was very big in my thinking when planning a boat trip after that. I probably wouldn't have given it a thought before that.

I am remembering the thread that came out immediately after the fire, before anyone knew any of the details. Going by memory, I remember a lot of posts suggested that, "well, the boat burned up. Nothing you can do about it." I also remember people suggesting that he boat did not have adequate safety, and a few posts effectively said, "We Southern California divers aren't like the wusses in the rest of the world. We don't need no stinkin' coddlin' when we dive."

 

[Kendall Raine]

Are they using the 2 other truth boats ? I think they are being used by other companies now

Truth and Vision are both owned by Channel Island Expeditions. If you're interested in multi-day dive trips there are other options.

 

[VikingDives]

Apparently, the industry is trying to redeem our image. I'm not sure what this initiative is calling for... https://www.dema.org/page/DIVEBOATActResourceCenter

View attachment 809815

My interpretation of what this is calling for is to roll back to a place where divers burn to death and no owner is held accountable. Every time I see this ad, I get a little nauseated - DEMA says cheap trips are more important than those divers' lives.

BUT, we as a Walmart shopper society want nothing more than the shell of any product, regardless of price. We see it in certifications, we see it in stores. Those of us who fight against it are the few, the many demand their baubles be delivered at cost.

Maybe I'm a troglodyte, but there comes a point where we have to stop wandering the crowded aisles and say enough is enough.

 

[The Chairman]

Maybe I'm a troglodyte

You dive caves? I know that I'm a troglodyte because I do.

It is literally trying to get day boats and liveaboards into separate categories.

Link that explains this somewhere?

 

[lowwall]

Id have went for the bunk exit. Dont know if it would have mattered.

We now know that the passengers were awake and aware of what was happening. If there was a viable path out, they would have tried it.

 

[rmorgan]

Jury instructions attached

 

[TrimixToo]

This whole incident and the threads it has spawned have made me seriously consider more aspects of risk management than I used to think about when going diving. I must say that I've overnighted on boats I would never even think of using that way again (all out of commercial service now, I think) and others I'd continue to use without a second thought.

Thanks so much to all who have contributed, but especially the few who have a good working knowledge of the topic from practical or legal standpoints. (I'm not going back over hundreds of posts to name you all and I don't want to miss anyone--but you know who you are.)

 

[KevinNM]

I don't think you can call it an exit, when the hatch or door goes to another room. AFAIF even in a building, the emergency exit needs to be a door that goes to the outside.

The coast guard disagreed. They thought it was fine for decades.

After the fire Truth Aquatics installed much more reasonable emergency exits on the sister ship, which came out on the deck by the rail. The coast guard responded to this by pulling the license on the boat and requiring the CG marine safety center to do a full review of the design and implementation before they could go back onto service. I have no idea if they were ever approved.

 

[lowwall]

The coast guard disagreed. They thought it was fine for decades.

After the fire Truth Aquatics installed much more reasonable emergency exits on the sister ship, which came out on the deck by the rail. The coast guard responded to this by pulling the license on the boat and requiring the CG marine safety center to do a full review of the design and implementation before they could go back onto service. I have no idea if they were ever approved.

The Coast Guard didn't think it was fine, they thought it complied with the regulations that applied to that vessel.

Among those regulations is a grandfathering clause that allows older vessels to avoid updating many systems to meet certain current safety requirements as long as they comply with the requirements at some particular earlier point in the vessel's history. Typically a substantial change in the grandfathered system or even related systems will result in the compliance date moving to today, which is no doubt what happened with the emergency exit change on the sister boat(s).

If you think the grandfathered safety date is a huge and potentially dangerous loophole, then you are correct. If you are surprised by this, then you haven't seen the power lobbyists have at every step in the creation of laws and the regulations that implement them.

 

[Capt Jim Wyatt]

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A ScubaBoard Staff Message...

This thread evolved into two different issues. Insurance issues and guilt of the Captain. The two issues have been separated and placed into separate threads.

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