The dive boat Conception was a death trap. It was a wooden vessel with a single narrow and steep stairway from the lower berthing deck and a small emergency exit hatch. When a fire broke out on September 2, 34 people sleeping on the lowering berthing deck died in the blaze.
The Conception was also inspected and approved by the US Coast Guard as meeting all requirements of a Subchapter T, Small Passenger Vessel. Recently, an investigation by the Los Angeles Times revealed that the Coast Guard had repeatedly rejected the National Transportation Safety Board’s (NTSB) recommendations for stricter fire safety regulations in this type of vessel.
Richard Winton and Mark Puente writing in the LA Times reported:
[The NTSB] repeatedly has called on the Coast Guard to require small vessels to establish procedures for conducting regular inspections and reporting maintenance and repair needs for all of a boat’s systems — including the hull and mechanical and electrical operations. This, the NTSB said, would better ensure safety on vessels between Coast Guard inspections, which occur every one to two years.
But the Coast Guard has pushed back on the recommendation, calling it “unnecessarily burdensome and duplicative of existing requirements.” …
A preliminary NTSB investigation found that the Conception had violated a requirement that it have a roving watch during the night, saying the five crew members who survived awoke to discover the flames. The agency also has raised concerns about the functionality of the two exits in the area where passengers slept in stacked bunks beneath the waterline.
Even so, the Conception passed Coast Guard inspection, a fact that some say underscores the problem.
“Yes, it complied with all the Coast Guard regulations, but that didn’t mean it was safe,” said John McDevitt, a former assistant fire chief and chair of a National Fire Protection Assn. committee on boat fire protection. “A string of recommendations have been ignored about early warning systems, detection, and training.”
The matter of limited access (egress and ingress) via the steep ladder and small hatch is problematic but even more of concern is why did the fire happen at all? We have heard some issues with charging digital devices for the passengers, and issues with lithium-ion batteries. Did she have a charging station and what about the house and start batteries? Also, what about the rules governing use of digital devices? I have heard of serious problems and at least one sinking due to lithium ion batteries.
What about smoke/fire/co detectors and fire extinguishers? Why did a fire get going and the passengers not be “alarmed?” Automatic sprinkler system?
The fact that the boat was wood was not the most important aspect although the access issue is crucial. The issues to do with the cause of the fire and the lack of alarm seems even more crucial!
Not only was the egress limited but initial reports say fire on the deck above prevented escape. This would also counter the suggestion that phone lithium batteries charging on the berthing deck caused the fire. The question of alarms is important, as is the reason why the standards for watch standing were basically ignored. The hull material also does matter because it could provide fuel for the fire, something that a steel hull would not. We will know a lot more after the NTSB report comes out in about a year’s time.
The larger issue is how the USCG could have approved this death trap as safe and in compliance with all rules and regs.
The relationship of the CG and NTSB seems a little similar in the wrong way with that of the NTSB and FAA.
The CG and FAA both suffer the tension of needing to encourage and foster commerce while simultaneously regulating it for safety purposes. Without extraordinary scruples and diligence, this defaults to an unhealthy arrangement. That’s what the empirical evidence shows, in both cases.
Each could use more generous and courageous political backing to show their teeth where needed.
But we have the ongoing problem of confusing Freedom with freedumb. That may take the immediate shape of propping up businesses that aren’t actually viable by looking the other way and trading lives as a kind of subsidy for failed enterprises.