Fire on dive boat Conception in CA

[BlueTrin]

Maybe this has been posted already

Conception Boat Fire: Here's The Latest On The Tragedy Off Santa Cruz Island

 

[ijdod]

"But at about 7:20 a.m., the boat sank in about 60 feet of water. Four bodies were recovered shortly after the vessel went down, described only as two adult men and two adult women."

from the article above. There was some discussion about the order of these events earlier.

 

[chillyinCanada]

Maybe this has been posted already

Conception Boat Fire: Here's The Latest On The Tragedy Off Santa Cruz Island

Thank you @BlueTrin.

For the members: This article may be dated September 2 but has been updated a few times even as late as September 4 at the time of my reading.

Here is a snip with regard to potential safety advice coming early:

" . . . in the past provided urgent safety recommendations in the middle of an investigation and that they won't wait for the investigation to end in order to do that."

 

[Storker]

it went from smoking moderately with no fire visible to almost comply engulfed in about a minute and a half.

I burn a lot of wood to heat my home. There are times when the amount of hot coals are diminished when I add new wood.

At some point there is enough heat to generate a lot of smoke but no flame. Typically I can open the door and the increased airflow may cause the new wood to ignite. Or I throw a match in and the wood catches fire. The smoke level quickly drops to near zero once the flames start up.

This is a pretty common thing for smoldering fires in confined spaces. The smoldering creates a lot of flammable gases and particles (AKA smoke and CO), but there isn't enough oxygen in the air to ignite them. Someone opens a door, there's a small gust of wind or the draft changes, and the fire goes from smoldering to full conflagration in fractions of a second as all the flammables in the air ignite and creates a huge draft.

Which is why it's very dangerous to open the door to a room where there's a smoldering fire.

 

[bob27]

From the above link posted by BlueTrin:

Reported BY LAIST STAFFIN NEWSON SEPTEMBER 3, 2019 4:14 PM

“Homendy (NTSB Board Member Jennifer Homendy) said she was 100 percent confident that investigators will determine the cause of the fire, why it occurred, how it occurred, and what it will take to prevent it from happening again.”

This is dangerous thinking in the first days of the NTSB investigation. I hope that it is an error in reporting rather than an actual statement from the NTSB leadership. Any credible investigator, regardless of the length and cost of an investigation, must always be willing to say “I don’t know.” This particular investigation is hampered by well-burned evidence, well-washed by salt water, and thirty-four of thirty-nine on-board eyewitnesses who will never give testimony. The only thing that can be said with 100% confidence is that at the end of the investigation, a measure of uncertainty will remain.

NTSB Investigator-In-Charge Adam Tucker should distance himself from such remarks if accurately reported.

 

[BDSC]

This was taken from the linked article on the previous page.

Homendy said she was 100 percent confident that investigators will determine the cause of the fire, why it occurred, how it occurred, and what it will take to prevent it from happening again.

Someone beat me to it.

 

[tursiops]

If it was so rare it would not have happened.

I actually can't believe you said this. It is so idiotic that it invites high skepticism for all your suggestions....especially the battery-powered chain saw. Jeez.

Accident management and emergency response does not try and avoid all possible events, or even try and provide the best possible solutions. For example, most car accidents happen at intersections. Which should we eliminate, cars or intersections? Do we have hospitals at every intersection? No. We have mechanisms to transport victims to nearby hospitals.

 

[CSandE]

From an article in the LA Times this morning:

Surviving crew member thought phone charging station might have sparked boat fire
One of the crew members aboard the dive boat Conception hadn’t been asleep long when a noise jolted him awake.

He swung open the door of the wheelhouse — the top level of the 75-foot boat, located just above the galley — and was greeted by flames.

As the fire raged in the predawn hours of Labor Day, the vessel’s captain made a frantic mayday call to the Coast Guard. Then he and four crew members jumped from the wheelhouse and climbed into a dinghy to get help from the Grape Escape, a fishing boat anchored nearby off Santa Cruz Island.

Once aboard, the crew member who had been jolted awake shook as he recounted the horrific story to Grape Escape owner Shirley Hansen. His theory, Hansen said, was that the fire started in the galley, where cellphones and cameras had been plugged in to charge overnight.


Roy Hauser, who designed the Conception and commissioned its construction in 1981, suggested another. He said he thinks, based in part on footage he viewed of the wood-hulled boat being ravaged by fire, that the blaze started in the bunk area and spread so rapidly that the 34 people there could not get out.“The impression I got was that the fire was already too big to do anything,” Hansen said in an interview Wednesday.

The cause of the fire, which killed 34 people, is now the subject of an intensive investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board, the U.S. Coast Guard and other federal and county agencies. Investigators are trying to determine where and how it started.

“This had to have been, in my estimation, one of those lithium battery chargers,” Hauser told The Times. “This happened in the belly of the boat. Those people did not have a chance to get out: From stem to stern, that boat was burning.”

 

[HalcyonDaze]

from the article above. There was some discussion about the order of these events earlier.

Can't go digging for it now, but another previously posted report said the first four bodies to be recovered were badly burned enough to require DNA identification. That doesn't necessarily contradict "injuries consistent with drowning," but that plus the bodies being sighted after the vessel sank supports the idea that none of those below got out.

As far as the statement from the NTSB, if they can track down signs of arcing on wires on an airliner that blew up at cruising altitude and was scattered on the seafloor in pieces, I would feel very confident they can locate the ignition source in this case.

 

[bubffm]

From the above link posted by BlueTrin:

Reported BY LAIST STAFFIN NEWSON SEPTEMBER 3, 2019 4:14 PM

“Homendy (NTSB Board Member Jennifer Homendy) said she was 100 percent confident that investigators will determine the cause of the fire, why it occurred, how it occurred, and what it will take to prevent it from happening again.”

This is dangerous thinking in the first days of the NTSB investigation. I hope that it is an error in reporting rather than an actual statement from the NTSB leadership. Any credible investigator, regardless of the length and cost of an investigation, must always be willing to say “I don’t know.” This particular investigation is hampered by well-burned evidence, well-washed by salt water, and thirty-four of thirty-nine on-board eyewitnesses who will never give testimony. The only thing that can be said with 100% confidence is that at the end of the investigation, a measure of uncertainty will remain.

NTSB Investigator-In-Charge Adam Tucker should distance himself from such remarks if accurately reported.

Totally agree. Extremely arrogant statement. Like the FAA deciding to let the 737-MAX continue to fly after it was perfectly clear after the first accident that it was not fit to fly.