They didn’t it turns out. According to an eye witness account, they were blown off the boat and swam to a different boat which made the Mayday call.
The boat was chartered by Worldwide Diving Adventures, which is based in the city of Santa Cruz, California, well north of Santa Cruz Island. I don’t know where the passengers were from.
A couple of the crew had some pretty significant injuries that jibe with that account.
I don’t know any more than anybody else here, but I agree that there’s not a whole lot that anyone could have done to help the passengers if it was indeed a propane explosion as has been hypothesized. Propane is heavier than air, so it tends to sink and build up in low areas (like bilges and below-deck compartments). If an explosive concentration is reached in one of these areas, all it takes is a spark to set off a conflagration.
I’ve seen the aftermath of two buildings that blew up from gas explosions, one from natural gas and one from propane. I was about five miles away from the propane explosion, which completely leveled a church in my town, and I heard it quite clearly. (I remember thinking to myself, “If I hear follow-up explosions, I’ll get worried…and see if we’re under attack.”) :dubious:
In any event, there’s not a whole lot of alternatives for a relatively small boat, I wouldn’t think. Liquid fuels (like kerosene or Coleman fuel) are even more dangerous onboard a small vessel. A small vessel likely isn’t able to produce the amount of electricity necessary for an electric stove.
If propane is utilized in the galley of a small vessel, maybe it would be prudent to require that vessels that utilize propane for cooking have combustible gas detectors installed in areas where it could build up, like below decks. Here’s a portable version, and here’s a marine version. I’m actually surprised something like this isn’t already required.
From the last website:
There will be an official update at 10 am tomorrow.
The latest is 29 dead and nine missing.
Someone who was on that same boat earlier this summer said in an interview that there were two exits, the main one and a rear escape hatch.
If the explosion was as sudden as apparently happened, it’s not likely that anyone below had a chance to reach either exit.
Does anyone here know if levels could have built up to a point where the people below deck may have been asphyxiated, or at least unconscious, before the explosion? I guess the autopsies would tell us that.
So you know fuck all about what actually happened but reserve your right to denigrate the crew members regardless?
I suspect mourning the victims is low on your list of priorities.
Some updates. 25 bodies found. 9 missing.
So this was a true nightmare no matter how this happened. Awful beyond anything.
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You’re still making assumptions based on no evidence.
We don’t know why this happened. We don’t know whether it was negligence or something else. We don’t know whether or not the crew tried to save the passengers - at a certain point it’s just not possible to get through fire, life is not a Hollywood movie where the hero can always brave the flames and survive.
And I don’t know if you’ve ever been on a ship that small, but they are invariably somewhat cramped with limited exits from the hold. Space aboard a ship is always at a premium. If everything above the sleeping area was on fire it might not have mattered how many exits there were, it would be impossible to exit.
More than one of the five survivors was seriously injured.
The 911 recordings are pretty harrowing, with the speaking crewmember sometimes incoherent and having breathing troubles.
Let the authorities investigate and get some facts, then we’ll know what happened.
Ugh, this breaks my heart. I have friends who dive off of this boat and I hope no one I know was on board. I was invited to go on a rafting trip down the Grand Canyon with a bunch of people, one of whom was a captain of one of the three Truth boats. I assume he is rafting and was not on the boat. I’'m really anxious about seeing the passenger list.
I looked up Twin Bridges, where the charter group was from and it looks like it was near Tahoe.
I was on the Truth, a different boat owned by the same company about a month ago for a wonderful whale watching trip where we saw a dozen humpbacks, a couple hundred dolphins, and the season’s first blue whale (might have been a fin whale).
These boats are well known in the community, and everyone is freaking out.
I wonder if more egress points would have helped, or was the nature of the explosion and fire such that it would not?
The really depressing thing is that, as far as we know, nobody had time to call or text anyone before they died.
The responders that go into that boat will need counseling afterwards. Burn victims are especially horrific and grotesque scenes.
I wouldn’t want to go into that boat after the fire cools. Someone has to retrieve the body’s for the families. It’s going to be a difficult job.
Yes, because family members feel so much better when they get panicked calls from dying relatives.
Maybe. According to the USDOT Emergency Response Guidebook, petroleum gas vapors, in addition to being extremely flammable, “may cause dizziness or asphyxiation without warning.”
This is a horrible tragedy. Hopefully it will spur regulatory changes to prevent a similar tragedy from happening again.
On a personal level, I mentioned upthread that I have witnessed the aftermath of two explosions, from leaking natural gas and propane, respectively, inside of buildings over the last couple of decades. It occurs to me that my house is currently heated with propane, and I have no combustible gas detectors in my house. It’s not something that ever occurred to me to get, and they certainly aren’t required by building code. The main safety factor for propane is the odorant that is added (ethyl mercaptan, which smells like rotten eggs), but it can lose its protective effect if people are asleep or have a diminished sense of smell (which can happen to anybody due to olfactory fatigue). In my house, we currently have smoke detectors (which are required, of course), and CO detectors (which are strongly recommended), but that’s it. I’m going to look into getting combustible gas detectors for my house.
From what was posted above, there were stairs at the front of the sleeping/shower area and a rear escape hatch. If no one made it out of either one, I can’t see anyone making it out of one in between them.
Boats of this size just don’t have lot of access points to the below-decks area.
Yes, the whole thing is depressing but the alternative would mean a protracted death. I think the loved ones would understand and hope for the least amount of suffering.
She was there. Our little town is in mourning.
My condolences, Qadgop, and also to all the others touched by this.