Thursday, March 28, 2024

NTSB: Liveaboards Should Improve Safety Gear In Wake Of Conception Fire

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The fire that killed 34 people aboard a dive boat anchored off the California coast last year has resulted in the US Government recommending that small passenger boats improve their safety gear, including better smoke detectors.

The 75-foot (23-meter) liveaboard Conception, with 33 passengers and six crew aboard, was anchored in Platts Harbor, off Santa Cruz Island, when it caught fire in the early morning of Sept. 2, 2019. All 33 passengers and one crewmember died of smoke inhalation after they were trapped in the berthing area while a fire raged on the deck above.

Both exits from the berthing area led to the fire- and smoke-filled enclosed area above, according to the US National Transportation Safety Board, which held a hearing this week to discuss its findings.

The NTSB called for all vessels similar to the Conception with overnight accommodations to be required to have interconnected smoke detectors in all passenger areas. It also recommended that a secondary means of escape lead into a different space than the primary exit, in case a single fire blocks both escape paths. The NTSB also called on the US Coast Guard to develop and implement an inspection program to verify that roving patrols are conducted – as required – for the safety of sleeping passengers and crew.

NTSB investigators found the absence of a required roving patrol on the Conception likely delayed the initial detection of the fire, allowed for its growth, precluded firefighting and evacuation efforts and directly led to the high number of deaths in the accident.

According to NTSB Chairman Robert Sumwalt:

“The Conception may have passed all Coast Guard inspections, but that did not make it safe. Our new recommendations will make these vessels safer, but there is no rule change that can replace human vigilance.”

The NTSB also reiterated its call for small passenger vessels to be required to implement a safety management system to improve the safety culture of vessel owners and operators.

While the Conception had smoke detectors in the below-deck berthing area, they weren’t connected to each other or the wheelhouse, and there were no smoke detectors in the salon, the common area above the sleeping quarters where investigators believe the fire started. Because of the fire damage to Conception, which burned to the water line and then sank, there was little physical evidence for investigators to establish exactly how, when and where the fire started.

During Tuesday’s virtual board meeting, the NTSB determined the probable cause of the fire and subsequent sinking was the failure of Truth Aquatics, Inc., the owner and operator of Conception, to provide effective oversight of its vessel and crewmember operations, including requirements to ensure that a roving patrol was maintained, which allowed a fire of unknown cause to grow, undetected, in the vicinity of the aft salon on the main deck.

According to the NTSB:

“Contributing to the undetected growth of the fire was the lack of a Coast Guard regulatory requirement for smoke detection in all accommodation spaces. Contributing to the high loss of life were the inadequate emergency escape arrangements from the vessel’s bunkroom, as both exited into a compartment that was engulfed in fire, thereby preventing escape.”

You can read a synopsis of the NTSB’s findings and recommendations here.

SourceNTSB.gov
John Liang
John Lianghttps://www.deeperblue.com/
John Liang is the News Editor at DeeperBlue.com. He first got the diving bug while in High School in Cairo, Egypt, where he earned his PADI Open Water Diver certification in the Red Sea off the Sinai Peninsula. Since then, John has dived in a volcanic lake in Guatemala, among white-tipped sharks off the Pacific Coast of Costa Rica, and other places including a pool in Las Vegas helping to break the world record for the largest underwater press conference.

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