This morning in Egypt ...

[Mike Walker]

This is not a good approach. The impact of solving that problem must also be considered, ohterwise you end up trying to "bail our your boat with a teaspoon." What you are really trying to do is look at every potential action in terms if its impact AND its difficulty; then you look for those actions that are BOTH high impact and low difficulty, then you consider those that are high-impact and high-difficulty, then you possibly consider those that are low impact. YOu never bother with thos that are low impact and high diffculty.
The point is, that tackling problems just because they are easy is a poor practice, and possilby wased effort/resources.

I didn't say it was an exclusive approach - I simply offered the other side of the conversation.

So many posts above that try to make big issues out of little so as to declare any action impossible.
"Some of you may die, but that's a risk I'm willing to take" - L. Farquaad
It's frustrating.

 

[drrich2]

But, the other way to look at it is 'what are the most solvable problems'.

This, and Tursiop's follow up post, speak to an important issue; what are we reacting to here? When we discuss topics such as whether a boat is safe or dangerously risky, whether we should collectively boycott an operation or a number of them, demanding adherence to proposed new standards in boat fire mitigation measures, what are we reacting to? I'm referring to what underlying issue, not the 3 deaths in this case.

I propose it's one of 2 things, and you guys helped bring that out.

1.) The perceived degree of danger, that it's unacceptably risky to go on that trip. This is independent of whether anyone could do more, is negligent, etc... It's just too dangerous. This is a matter of perceived threat.

2.) The perceived degree to which whatever risk is there hasn't been responsibly mitigated in someone's view. If the risk is 1 in 50,000, but ought to be 1 in 10 million, that's unconscionable and that vendor should be punished with public shaming, working to convince others to avoid it and book with competitors, etc... This is a matter of perceived principle.

This matters because if people reckon based on 1.), and perceived risk of diving mainstream Red Sea liveaboards doesn't exceed the threshold of tolerability, not much may happen. In the U.S., the potential for huge liability payouts shifts policy decisions towards 2.). I'm guessing Egypt's business environment works a little differently?

You may make a difference including detailed safety measure info. in trip reports, but how many of us know whether the smoke alarm system functions well? Or the fire suppression system, if any?

---

Anybody know whether the issues being discussed are confined to the Red Sea, versus various Indonesian and Philippines boats? Are Red Sea boats behind the industry mainstream, or does the Red Sea just have so many we hear the name more?

 

[John Bantin]

Watch the speed of this fire's progress and decide if you would have time to do anything more than jump overboard:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-65871310?fbclid=IwAR1rCddTHQ128j1MGA4_Iy5NZdQ65eeAlNOafO6oO-Q8DT2XvZWlVU0JYBQ​

 

[Mike Walker]

This, and Tursiop's follow up post, speak to an important issue; what are we reacting to here? When we discuss topics such as whether a boat is safe or dangerously risky, whether we should collectively boycott an operation or a number of them, demanding adherence to proposed new standards in boat fire mitigation measures, what are we reacting to? I'm referring to what underlying issue, not the 3 deaths in this case.

I propose it's one of 2 things, and you guys helped bring that out.

1.) The perceived degree of danger, that it's unacceptably risky to go on that trip. This is independent of whether anyone could do more, is negligent, etc... It's just too dangerous. This is a matter of perceived threat.

2.) The perceived degree to which whatever risk is there hasn't been responsibly mitigated in someone's view. If the risk is 1 in 50,000, but ought to be 1 in 10 million, that's unconscionable and that vendor should be punished with public shaming, working to convince others to avoid it and book with competitors, etc... This is a matter of perceived principle.


This matters because if people reckon based on 1.), and perceived risk of diving mainstream Red Sea liveaboards doesn't exceed the threshold of tolerability, not much may happen. In the U.S., the potential for huge liability payouts shifts policy decisions towards 2.). I'm guessing Egypt's business environment works a little differently?

You may make a difference including detailed safety measure info. in trip reports, but how many of us know whether the smoke alarm system functions well? Or the fire suppression system, if any?

---

Anybody know whether the issues being discussed are confined to the Red Sea, versus various Indonesian and Philippines boats? Are Red Sea boats behind the industry mainstream, or does the Red Sea just have so many we hear the name more?

You definitely make a good point with the emphasis on 'perceived'.

And that's the big problem - the Egyptian government and dive industry has essentially elected to hide incidents and manage the perception rather than solving actual problems. I don't disagree that the majority of travellers simply don't care and without the backstop of governmental regulation this allows for the race-to-the-bottom to exist.

I find it particularly amusing that travellers are perfectly willing to spend a substantial premium on 'Air Travel' level safety for 5-10 hours on either end of their trip but then happily accept 'sketchy dive boat' level of safety for the 150 hours in between.

Fixing this is a slow and painful process. But we have to start somewhere and I think we are seeing a slow change in the dive industry. I haven't been on a trip in recent memory that hasn't had some discussions about boat disasters amongst other passengers. After RSA1 and Conception every boat briefing in every location I travelled started to emphasize secondary exit paths. Word gets around and perceptions can be changed.

I'm not expecting changes overnight. But we have to keep talking about it.

Watch the speed of this fire's progress and decide if you would have time to do anything more than jump overboard:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-65871310?fbclid=IwAR1rCddTHQ128j1MGA4_Iy5NZdQ65eeAlNOafO6oO-Q8DT2XvZWlVU0JYBQ​

And that's why I've been focussing on alerting systems. If all you have to do is smack a big red mushroom button on your way over the railing that might just happen and might just give those down below a chance to go up a secondary exit. The idea that anybody is going to run into a burning boat to knock on doors is absurd. In my mind the single most impactful thing in these situations is ensuring that as soon as one person knows there is a hazard, everybody knows that there is a hazard - from there they can make the best possible effort to save themselves.

In this thread I choose to turn the conversation towards small changes that might make big differences so far as survivability. Maybe someone operating a boat reads one of them and thinks 'hey, that wouldn't be too hard to do, let's try it'. Maybe, like Don's CO detectors or scubadada's grab bag these small ideas trickle out into the mainstream and maybe save a life.

 

[KevinNM]

This is not a good approach. The impact of solving that problem must also be considered, ohterwise you end up trying to "bail out your boat with a teaspoon." What you are really trying to do is look at every potential action in terms if its impact AND its difficulty; then you look for those actions that are BOTH high impact and low difficulty, then you consider those that are high-impact and high-difficulty, then you possibly consider those that are low impact. YOu never bother with thos that are low impact and high diffculty.
The point is, that tackling problems just because they are easy is a poor practice, and possilby wased effort/resources.

I remember a risk manager who suggested focusing on the low impact high frequency events and the very high impact low frequency events.

 

[tursiops]

I remember a risk manager who suggested focusing on the low impact high frequency events and the very high impact low frequency events.

frequency?

 

[KevinNM]

frequency?

In this context high frequency is the kind of issue that you predict happens once or more a trip and low frequency would be things that you do not expect to ever happen in a year of trips. Like the boat catching fire.

 

[tursiops]

In this context high frequency is the kind of issue that you predict happens once or more a trip and low frequency would be things that you do not expect to ever happen in a year of trips. Like the boat catching fire.

Ahh, OK. I think of that as likelihood (frequency to me always means something is reoccuring...). OK, that's another sort. Somehow, of course, you still need to factor in the difficulty of solving the problem, once you've identified possible problems to deal with.
Impact vs likelihood is a well-known hyperbola, with a common example being nuclear war at one extrema and nasty letters between ambassadors at the other. The key is to find something off the curve...anomalously high impact for its likelihood, or anomalously high likelihood for its impact.

 

[RedSeaDiver2]

A couple of points -

- what is practical in a western country may - or may not - be practical in places like Egypt - factors can be cost, the ability to maintain equipment, the availability of equipment, etc etc.

In an ideal world liveaboards would be fitted out with the very expensive marine-grade thermal fire detection systems etc etc., and all the crew would have completed the STCW training that is required to work on a superyacht - but that isn't required in the U.S. for boats like the Conception, and the Aggressor fleet is a large fleet of liveaboards targeting the U.S. market and they don't have either of these on their vessels - which would indicate to me that the demand for these from the diving public is low - even after the Red Sea Aggressor 1 fire.

So I think that at the moment it comes down to each individual's acceptance level of risk and their doing individual things such as taking a CO detector on board. A group that is booking an entire boat may be able to do a little more as a group thing. One question that I would ask is - how many people do a first aid refresher course before they go on a liveaboard trip? (or any holiday)

While there is potentially a demand for a Nautilus-level vessel in the Red Sea, I would hesitate to recommend to a wealthy person that they build such a vessel at the moment because that vessel is mainly going to be targeting the U.S. market and sometime soonish it seems likely that Israel is going to have a crack at Iran which will destabilise the region and that will deter tourists.

 

[RedSeaDiver2]

Sorry, what I meant was that real ships with real marine fire detection systems approved by IMO use heat detectors. Systems which cost tens of thousands and do automatic things like secure ventilation, close ventilation dampers, shut down engines, fire off the FM200 system, alert the crew and passengers and make a note on your AIS.

Liveaboard dive boats have crappy Home Depot smoke detectors with dead batteries. I’ve sailed on both.

I think that you need to add an extra 0 to the cost for one of these proper systems.