In discussions in the immediate aftermath of the fire, before people really knew what happened, a number of posters said things that amounted to "We Southern California divers are not like you wimps in the rest of the world. We don't need or even want things like luxury accommodations, fire escapes, etc." It sounded like being willing to stay on a boat that did not meet standard safety features was some kind of a badge of honor that the rest of us could not possibly understand, wimps that we are.
I don't really buy that.
Truth Aquatics, in its day, was a very well respected institution; and the boats, based upon my experience, here and abroad, were quite luxurious by comparison to many in the stickier parts of the world, and successfully operated for decades before the tragedy.
Kristy Finstad, a hometown friend and a victim of the
Conception disaster, was a very familiar face, on many on those trips.
Having dived on all three vessels for more than thirty years, and worked on two, during various college stints, there were the occasional crew complaints about the then-compliant sizes of the escape hatches and the difficulties we just had in passing through them for one reason or another, close to a top bunk -- not to mention the real problem of the ballooning sizes of both the American and European populations.
There was some very black humor about that very subject, spanning years, with more-than occasional divers carrying 35-40 pounds of lead on weight belts.
What shocked me the most about the disaster, was that seeming lack of a watch -- something that didn't fly years ago; and we all pulled some late nights, doing just that . . .
