CONCEPTION FIRE - NTSB REPORT & NEW USCG RULES

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Divers have literally been complaining over 50 years to keep "the government" out of the business of regulating the scuba industry. Now half of you are complaining about how the USCG should have done a better job enforcing (more & better) regulations the Conception.

I wish they had done more too - beforehand and without being hamstrung by a Congress and public that wants less and less oversight to do whatever they damn well please - which cost these poor divers their lives.
 
Divers have literally been complaining over 50 years to keep "the government" out of the business of regulating the scuba industry. Now half of you are complaining about how the USCG should have done a better job enforcing (more & better) regulations the Conception.
Boating charter industry? This could have been a fishing charter.

The owners could have done a better job putting safety as a priority. Customers could have done a better job demanding better safety practices. Hopefully everyone learns.

It's an interesting tightrope we walk between "freedom" and "responsibility".
 
Customers could have done a better job demanding better safety practices. Hopefully everyone learns.
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.
 
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 . . .
 
I don't really buy that accusation.
I did not make an accusation. I just summarized what was written in some of the posts after the incident.
 
I did not make an accusation. I just summarized what was written in some of the posts after the incident.
Corrected . . .
 
I think it says a lot when we need regulations to keep us safe. You'd think people could use some logic and common sense.
Aviation and ship safety rules written in blood. People die and everyone agrees to not let it happen again. Commercial aviation in the 1970s could have neen nearly as safe as it is today if it had been run like it is today.

But the rules requiring a night watchman are not new. Truth was basically ignoring every safety regulation that they could get away with if following it would cost them money or inconvenience them.
 
USCG? Fair enough; but as an aside, I know of more than a few "coasties" who wouldn't have a chance of getting their prodigious asses through that hatch . . .

It's a well-known problem where I work, google "disaster recovery worst practices". It starts with having backups but never testing them, using fresh tape for "compliance testing" backups but not for the actual production ones, restores working on the same computer but not on a new one, etc., all the way to the (possibly UL about a) datacenter in a WTC tower with a complete off-site clone... in the other one.

We have books written about disaster recovery setups that are 100% compliant with all applicable rules and regulations and equally 100% useless when the fecal matter comes in contact with the air displacement device. Situation Normal, nothing to see here.
 
Aviation and ship safety rules written in blood. People die and everyone agrees to not let it happen again. Commercial aviation in the 1970s could have neen nearly as safe as it is today if it had been run like it is today.

But the rules requiring a night watchman are not new. Truth was basically ignoring every safety regulation that they could get away with if following it would cost them money or inconvenience them.
Not just Aviation and ship, Railroads as well.
 
But the rules requiring a night watchman are not new. Truth was basically ignoring every safety regulation that they could get away with if following it would cost them money or inconvenience them.
I am doing this from memory and perhaps someone can correct me if my memory is faulty, but IIRC, Truth Aquatics believed that stationing a crew member during the night so that he or she would die with the passengers meant that they did not have to have a night watchman.
 

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