Fire on dive boat Conception in CA

[chillyinCanada]

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A ScubaBoard Staff Message...

May I direct you to the post prior to that of tursiops, posted by moderator staff member "bowlofpetunias"

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[tarponchik]

I'm not sure why you'd think that. A single couch cushion is enough to get to point of flashover in a house fire; and when that happens anything remotely flammable in the room is on fire. Pretty much everything you see in the video is flammable, except for some metal bits. The hull is fiberglass, the rest is plywood, with some plastic trim. There's quite a lot of couch there in the cabin. Belowdecks, there's mattresses, curtains, pillows... and that's just the hull and furniture.

Here I disagree. Things "remotely flammable" take time to catch fire, and by then the fire alarms would wake up everyone, ear-plugged or not. Fiberglass, plywood and solid wooden parts like stairway rails are combustibles, but it's not easy to set them on fire. A book, for example, is combustible too, but try to throw one of the useless hardcovers that decorate your bookshelf into the fireplace, and you'll see that it is smoldering but not really burning, unless you turn the pages with the poker.

So I see 2 scenarios here. Either it started with something really big on fire, like a 5-gallon gasoline container; or it started slowly with some small stuff and gradually spread around, and in such case it is total failure of the alarm system.

 

[BedHog]

Been following this thread closely. I would imagine it will be rather difficult to find the exact cause given the extent of the damage however as long as there are people speculating I am going to wager a guess that it was a cheap battery from China or HongKong, probably one that was repackaged to appear as a battery with a higher capacity or whatever. We know these things are all over the internet and are not only way below stated capacity but are also rather unpredictable in terms of stability and performance. One takeaway from this incident that could be positive is that divers should really think twice about trying to save a few bucks by purchasing batteries that are not trusted name brands by the major manufacturers.

 

[tursiops]

divers should really think twice about trying to save a few bucks by purchasing batteries that are not trusted name brands by the major manufacturers

You don't always know. There are counterfeit "trusted name brands" on the market. The solution can't be just to ask the passengers to have good batteries, but rather to assume some of the batteries are bad and to require charging locations/boxes/times/whatever that control for possible failures.

 

[ijdod]

Here I disagree. Things "remotely flammable" take time to catch fire, and by then the fire alarms would wake up everyone, ear-plugged or not. Fiberglass, plywood and solid wooden parts like stairway rails are combustibles, but it's not easy to set them on fire. A book, for example, is combustible too, but try to throw one of the useless hardcovers that decorate your bookshelf (or if you do not have any, buy Bill Clinton's "My Life" for this purpose, it is $0.25 at Amazon) into the fireplace, and you'll see that it is smoldering but not really burning, unless you turn the pages with the poker.

So I see 2 scenarios here. Either it started with something really big on fire, like a 5-gallon gasoline container; or it started slowly with some small stuff and gradually spread around, and in such case it is total failure of the alarm system.

I think what we're mainly disagreeing about is how much impact a fire of even small stuff can have, and how quickly that can involve the big stuff.

 

[tarponchik]

I think what we're mainly disagreeing about is how much impact a fire of even small stuff can have, and how quickly that can involve the big stuff.

Yes.

 

[Akimbo]

Temperatures reach up to 1100 degrees in that kind of fire. Aluminum melts, kevlar melts, nomex melts, the structural fiberglass burns. Unless the entire interior is made of stainless steel it's going to fall apart and burn. If it's made of stainless steel it will just melt through the bottom of the boat, because a fiberglass hull is burnable plastic.

Just a small clarification on a good post: Aluminum melts at 1,221°F/660.3°C. Stainless Steel melts between 2,540 and 2,642°F or
1,394 and 1,450°C (varies by alloy). Steel melts at around 1,370°C or 2,500°F (varies by alloy). I'm guessing that steel wasn't mentioned because it requires paint, which burns and outgasses toxic chemicals well below 1,100°F.

Of course they both are much more malleable at these temperatures so are highly compromised structurally.

Assuming batteries were a direct cause (speculation) how many of us are willing to leave our phones, computers, video/camera, and other equipment batteries on shore?

Onshore? How about in your backyard? If a combustion source can burn up a boat it can burn down a house.

 

[Stoo]

To have passengers grab a bunk and go to sleep prior to a thorough safety briefing seems like a poor idea, and if this is accurate, will undoubtedly change. Also, looking at that one interior photo, if there is an emergency exit there, it doesn't appear to be very obvious, nor is there any sort of signage. I would think that a lighted sign would be mandatory, but perhaps this is a case where it takes something like this to cause regulations to be updated.

In Tobermory, there is a booming tour-boat business. For decades, a number of the boats were old wooden boats that were "historic" boats dating back to the '40s and '50s. There were a number of dive boats that were modified fish tugs.

Then one of these old tour boats was hit by a rogue wave. It flooded and quickly sank, taking two young people with it. During the subsequent investigation, it was determined that the Coast Guard had been "grandfathering" many of these old boats year after year.

That ended on the spot and perhaps eight boats were simply lifted out of the water and never sailed again. The tour industry and the charter industry both had to 'comply or die'. It was the best thing to happen to both industries and we now have much better, safer boats as a result of that tragedy.

 

[John ("Popeye") Renshaw]

On National Geographic Channel, there is a great series on sea disasters. "Conception" tragedy would make for a great episode, with much to be derived and learned from this experience. If NTSB takes responsibility to issue final report of investigations, it could take several years. Big problem: the fire happened so fast; and unlike airliners, there are no "cockpit recorders" or technical boat operation data recorders; eyewitness accounts likely to be conflicting or unreliable. Final recommendations may lie on common sense considerations for improvements, human factors, training factors, routine checklist improvements.

 

[bigDave]

The design of conception is not always like other boats. On my boat, for instance, you could see the entire salon/Galley/out on the main deck from the captains chair. These types of situations need a one size fits all solution.

There is some wording about one watch on each deck. I’ve never seen it enforced, we used cctv cameras to see the sundeck and engineroom from the operating station. Our OCMI bought it as an equivalency.

Understand, my suggestion is specific to Truth and Vision when they resume operations.