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)
