NTSB CONCEPTION HEARING - THIS TUESDAY @ 10AM

[chris kippax]

I'm not a captain of a vessel that carries other people, so you are right, I have no idea. There was no firefighting gear on the second boat? What about a bucket brigade? From the outside the crew had the best knowledge of the exit route. The report describes a captain and crew escaping the boat as rapidly as possible -- I'm sorry that does not make sense to me.

The large volume of noxious fumes would of made this fire extremely difficult if not impossible to fight without BA.
In all honesty I think there was next to nothing the crew could do. The blaze sounds to be well established before it was found. The fire fighting equipment on the "Great escape" would of not been sufficient to fight a fire of this magnitude.
A bucket would of been like pissing on a wildfire.

 

[Wookie]

The large volume of noxious fumes would of made this fire extremely difficult if not impossible to fight without BA.
In all honesty I think there was next to nothing the crew could do. The blaze sounds to be well established before it was found. The fire fighting equipment on the "Great escape" would of not been sufficient to fight a fire of this magnitude.
A bucket would of been like pissing on a wildfire.

It's amazing in real life how fast a spray of water knocks down the heat of a fire. Of course, it does so by turning into steam, which is hard to breathe, but maybe not as hard as flames and smoke. I'm not arguing that the salon wasn't fully involved by the time the crew found the fire, and that there wasn't anything they could have done, but as I learned in the nuclear navy, do something, anything, even if it's wrong. The right thing might come to you while you're doing wrong things, and even a wrong thing might help one person survive. Doing nothing helps no one.

 

[chris kippax]

It's amazing in real life how fast a spray of water knocks down the heat of a fire. Of course, it does so by turning into steam, which is hard to breathe, but maybe not as hard as flames and smoke. I'm not arguing that the salon wasn't fully involved by the time the crew found the fire, and that there wasn't anything they could have done, but as I learned in the nuclear navy, do something, anything, even if it's wrong. The right thing might come to you while you're doing wrong things, and even a wrong thing might help one person survive. Doing nothing helps no one.

Fair call , but I only hope I am never faced with the same scenario. Survivor guilt would be hard to deal with.

 

[John Bantin]

Which crewmember would you have man the 01-03? The cook who went down at 2100 and back up at 0430? The divemaster who went down at 2300 and back up at 0530? Crew rest is an issue. Getting a liveaboard crew 12 hours of rest, with 8 hours continuous is a real issue when the compressors have to be fired up to warm up at 0600 and tank fills arent complete until 2300. Sure, the mate could do that except the days the boat is underway until first dive at 0730. The Stewardess who is up from 0600 to 2200 with a break during the day? You have easy solutions to very complex problems. As I say, we manned a 24 hour watch anyway, regardless of the status of the vessel (underway, moored, or anchored), but every other liveaboard I've ever worked or paid to be on or spoke to crewmembers on didn't move much at night and the "mate" helped the deck crew during the day.

I was the dive guide on the Lady Jenny V in the summer of 1992 (aged 45). We dived the whole length of the Red Sea from Egypt to Djibouti, including the Sudan, Eritrea and the islands off the Yemen. The crew shared the watches. I did 01.00 - 03.00hrs but because the engineer had his work cut out during the day, I also did his watch 03.00 - 05.00hrs. I didn't have a cabin and slept under the saloon table so I had to wait until the guests finished. It was tough but we averted many incidents during my six months onboard. It was a matter of staying alive for all of us. I also led three dives each day. Tell me it can't be done over a weekend!

 

[Wookie]

I was the dive guide on the Lady Jenny V in the summer of 1992 (aged 45). We dived the whole length of the Red Sea from Egypt to Djibouti, including the Sudan, Eritrea and the islands off the Yemen. The crew shared the watches. I did 01.00 - 03.00hrs but because the engineer had his work cut out during the day, I also did his watch 03.00 - 05.00hrs. I didn't have a cabin and slept under the saloon table so I had to wait until the guests finished. It was tough but we averted many incidents during my six months onboard. It was a matter of staying alive for all of us. I also led three dives each day. Tell me it can't be done over a weekend!

I didn’t say it couldn’t be done, I said it was illegal on a US flagged vessel to work more than 12 hours a day. I expect you worked more than 12 hours a day.

 

[KevinNM]

I was the dive guide on the Lady Jenny V in the summer of 1992 (aged 45). We dived the whole length of the Red Sea from Egypt to Djibouti, including the Sudan, Eritrea and the islands off the Yemen. The crew shared the watches. I did 01.00 - 03.00hrs but because the engineer had his work cut out during the day, I also did his watch 03.00 - 05.00hrs. I didn't have a cabin and slept under the saloon table so I had to wait until the guests finished. It was tough but we averted many incidents during my six months onboard. It was a matter of staying alive for all of us. I also led three dives each day. Tell me it can't be done over a weekend!

The average Navy 7th fleet crewman was working something like 110 hours a week in 2017. Other then 17 sailors drowned and a billion dollars in damage from collisions it worked OK.

 

[Michael3826]

Patricia, Neal’s partner, had shoes, jacket, light, and a backpack. She was woken up, got ready to go and wanted to be rescued. She wasn’t the only one. No shoes or other items mentioned in the reports for Neal, Adrian, or Andrew.

And had her phone

 

[Michael3826]

I looked

But if you don't know and never practiced faking out the hose, starting the pump, charging the hose, aiming the fog at the heat, etc. etc. etc, you don't know, nor would a fire hose be your first instinct.

I looked at the interviews from NtSb again. Looks like it was Mikey who passed by the fire hose twice. 2ng galley. In his statement he was hired in 2017, 2 years he had worked with truth aquatics, and never required do a fire drill or emergency evacuation or presumably anything. He knew where the extinguishers were and was heading for those. 100% lack of training and oversight by jerry and glen. 34 Manslaughter charges not far away for them. If justice is real, for the both of them. But likely glen will let jerry be his little martyr.
sad. Very sad.

 

[HalcyonDaze]

The average Navy 7th fleet crewman was working something like 110 hours a week in 2017. Other then 17 sailors drowned and a billion dollars in damage from collisions it worked OK.

Bingo. On the project I mentioned where I balked at the diving, one of the other safety issues was we were bashing in 10-12 hour days (not counting my ~1.5 hour round commute to the boat ramp and downloading/charging gear at home) every day including weekends over four weeks. I got one weather day during that timeframe and a four-day break in the middle. I definitely felt like that contributed to a near-miss we had on the final day.

Not going to directly address someone who appears to have joined this forum for the sole purpose of making personal attacks in this thread, but I notice that the fire stations were at the aft of the salon. As I recall by the time most of the crew topside was alerted to the fire the stairs down from the sun deck also in that area were unusable. In the time between when the fire was discovered and when the aft stairs were rendered unusable, was there time to activate the pumps and firehoses?

 

[KevinNM]

As I recall by the time most of the crew topside was alerted to the fire the stairs down from the sun deck also in that area were unusable. In the time between when the fire was discovered and when the aft stairs were rendered unusable, was there time to activate the pumps and firehoses?

The aft stairs were unusable when the first crewman reached them.
He jumped down and was able to look into the salon and saw it was fully engulfed, with the ceiling melting onto the deck. I don't think anyone after him was able get past or even reach that corner, and apparently he was one of the crewman who'd never had any boat fire fighting training.