NTSB CONCEPTION HEARING - THIS TUESDAY @ 10AM

The crew touched the front windows blacked with smoke and they were warm but not hot. Not sure what that means, but I would guess it means there wasn't an intense source of heat nearby.

 

In basic training we had to pull a fire watch on the giant bay we lived in. Every so often one of the NCOs would walk around the platoon bays and it would be 'significant emotional event' if you where not awake and on-duty.

 

You wouldn't know before you begin a trip.

I mentioned that the only liveaboard that I went on that had a roving night watch and dedicated charging station was the Belize Aggressor III. On all other liveaboards that I went on, the crew went to their cabins/bunks and we didn't see them at night, and charging was done in our bunks/cabins down below. So clearly an unsafe culture is prevalent.

Doing the minimum necessary, pushing limits, and working "smarter, not harder" are human nature and prevalent in many fields.
As the Health and Safety Advisor for our schools, I'm quite familiar with cultures of safety - or not. They generally run top down, but like I said, anyone can shine during an inspection/check-in.

The way that I would determine if I'm comfortable with a crew or boat is to do research in as many places as possible, look at reviews and threads, see which names keep coming up, possibly talk to people who have been on that boat, and ask questions in writing. I would look at the layout of the boat and egress points. I would ask about centrally connected smoke detectors, accessible fire extinguishers, and emergency lighting. From the above, I would determine if I'm comfortable going on a particular liveaboard. More importantly, I would determine which liveaboards I would not be comfortable with in light of what we know now.

It would be impossible to know what happens in practice on every single "cruise", no matter what regulations, policies, and protocols are in place.

 

That was what I thought; for all the talk about the confined escape hatch that was the exit likely rendered unusable by the fire. If anyone below had woken up in time to get out before being overcome by smoke, they would have tried the forward stairwell.

 

IIRC, you could get into the shower room directly forward of the berthing area without having to move into the salon. You did have to climb into the toxic smoke, before descending into the shower room. But if you managed that you could get out through a hatch in the shower room. There is no evidence that anyone was able to do that. I’m not sure anyone in the berthing area knew that this was possible, as the member of the crew was on her first trip and I’ve never heard that it was briefed to the passengers.

 

Number of factual inaccuracies:
1. You could NOT get directly from the bunkroom to the shower room.
2. You had to go up the bunkroom stairs, across maybe five feet of salon floor (remember that the fire temp would have been around 1,000º and one breath of that can kill you by searing you lungs), and then down stairs into the shower room.
3. Once in the shower room, it's a dead end. There is no hatch there.
4. The hatch you may have seen is actually from the chain locker, which was directly forward of the shower room.
5. But there's no direct access from the shower room into the chain locker and then out that hatch.

 

One year ago in our lab at the University we had a bad fire caused by a lithium battery which exploded while charging. Those devices are like bombs, they pack a tremendous amount of energy which is suddenly released in case of fire.
No fire extinguisher can work. In our case, in less than 30s the whole building was saturated by toxic smoke. People did not die as this lab is at ground level, so people escaped through windows. Several ones, indeed, needed medical assistance for having being in contact with the toxic smoke. The toxic smoke contaminated the furniture and everything was inside the building. It did take months before it was possible to use the building again, and everything inside had to be replaced or deeply cleaned for removing the toxic substances.
So, if the fire on the Conception was originated by a lithium battery exploding during charge, I think that even a crew member being beside it at the moment of explosion could have done very little. The real problem is charging lithium batteries inside an enclosed space where humans are present.

 

Lithium batteries can explode or catch fire all on their own do to short circuits internal (insulator failure) in the battery or the charger itself has failed and short circuits the battery. I also had a small CR2 battery exploded in my ear filled the whole room with lithium. The circuit had the option of having two different types of batteries one chargeable one not, unfortunately they filled the circuit with the charging components and installed the non-rechargeable battery lithium. Boom!