Fire on dive boat Conception in CA

[NAUI Wowie]

It appears the audio is half duplex but the part where the Coast Guard is asking the boat crew if they can get back to unlock the door to allow the passengers out....

there is no door on the normal exit point from below decks. and an escape hatch somewhere else wouldnt be locked. Possibly that was just confusion on part of the coast guard employee or a standard vessel response not knowing the layout of a specific vessel.

 

[george_austin]

Fuel leak? What could cause this? How could this have been prevented? What can be learned?

Very sad. There’s going to be youngsters on this trip too. Prayers for all.

 

[george_austin]

if the stairs lead up to the galley, where does the emergency exit/emergency port lead to? the divedeck/engine room or the bridge?
Up to the bow is where the emergency exit goes on the Conception but at 3 am and people overcome with toxic smoke in a relatively confined space.

i hope someone managed to make it to shore, although it clearly doesn't look good...those poor people.

 

[tehach]

There's some new information in the below NYT article. It appears the Conception was fully engulfed in flames by the time the inflatable containing her crew reached and awoke the captain of The Grape Escape, anchored some 300-feet away.

Boat ‘Engulfed in Flames’ Leaves Over 30 Missing Off Santa Cruz Island

 

[azstinger11]

This irks the hell out of me. Like this family hasn't been through enough.

 

[HalcyonDaze]

The point of this forum is not necessarily to definitively determine the cause of an accident. The purpose is also to have a meeting place to discuss in a measured and thoughtful way how an accident *may* have occurred. People can and should speculate on the cause, so long as the logic is reasonable and productive. It causes people to use critical thinking skills and consider angles they may not have thought of before. I have to say that personally, this forum has been the *single* greatest learning tool for my own dive safety and development, precisely because of the speculation in it.

It's a fine line to walk, but I agree with this statement - start with what we know, suggest what might have caused those events, and then refine the discussion as new information comes up. One of my bigger pet peeves on the forum is when someone comes in with a pet theory or ax to grind and keeps at it even after that line of inquiry has either been ruled unlikely or ruled out entirely. A good rule of thumb is to use your sense of humility - are you contributing to the discussion with a plausible and reasoned sequence of events that can be discussed and evaluated against the known facts, or are you showing off how much you know about a particular topic?

For instance, I don't get what the reference to "series of tragedies" in post #75 was meant to imply, given those were two unrelated incidents over an unspecified timeframe that don't remotely deserve to be labeled "tragedies" in this context.

 

[swamp diver]

Would there have been nitrox or large O2 bottles stored on this boat? If so where?

 

[NAUI Wowie]

This irks the hell out of me. Like this family hasn't been through enough.

Its the internet. Some people are just insane unfortunately. And I agree with you.

edit to add in that I was referring to the pic he found on facebook where some crazy was ranting against the dive organizers. Who seem to have all been on the boat from previous posts.

 

[outofofficebrb]

The point of this forum is not necessarily to definitively determine the cause of an accident. The purpose is also to have a meeting place to discuss in a measured and thoughtful way how an accident *may* have occurred. People can and should speculate on the cause, so long as the logic is reasonable and productive. It causes people to use critical thinking skills and consider angles they may not have thought of before. I have to say that personally, this forum has been the *single* greatest learning tool for my own dive safety and development, precisely because of the speculation in it.

I agree with you. It sparks a lot of questions being asked in our own dive lives. I posted this because people were saying to stop speculating etc., and to follow the rules of the forum but it specifically states in the rules of the forum that we should talk about causes, theories, etc. I just wanted to point that out given this.

 

[NickB-LA]

and wow, I just googled them and google shows them "permanently closed" .. that was fast

I think that is a function of a move to a new location. From what it appears the company is now located in Winters CA., not Santa Cruz according to their "Contact Us" section of their website.