OT: Talk About Horrible Luck

Yep, I’ve had a career on the water for close to 40 years, practicing situation awareness constantly can save your life. People who cut corners get away with it most of the time, but when it goes south, there can be **** to pay like in this situation, and it can take out others.

Here’s a great example from my industry - I owned a Maine windjammer for 28 years, every single night we had passengers aboard, we maintained an anchor/fire watch. We caught a few things that might have got out of hand had we not. This Captain in California let it slide and then one night catastrophe came a calling.

https://www.npr.org/2020/12/02/940997136/california-dive-boat-captain-charged-in-fire-that-killed-34

Jesus, that's terribly sad.

Okay, so a fire starts and blocks their exit, but that's a lot of people sleeping in what is called a bunk room. Does it seem odd that there isn't another exit (one at each side or possibly even) somewhere? That or do you think they died from smoke inhalation? Either way, what a tragedy.
 
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Coming from a 24 year Navy veteran in the Aviation community. This is a maintenance issue. It happens with small airplanes across the country.

People buy airplanes and the payments are high, but when they buy them they don't realize how expensive maintenance is and how frequently it has to be performed to maintain proper functionality of all of the systems and parts on the aircraft. Airplanes are not designed to just sit out on the flightline and never get maintenance done. When maintenance is not performed routinely things start failing. Also, if the airplane is not used frequently enough and just sits there things start failing as well.

Commercial and military aircraft are cycled off the flight schedule so phase maintenance can be performed at regular intervals. There are dailies that are performed before flights. Flight Engineers and pilots do proper walk-arounds before flying aircraft.

Owners of these private airplanes are often doing everything half-@ss or what we call gundecking the maintenance.
 
Jesus, that's terribly sad.

Okay, so a fire starts and blocks their exit, but that's a lot of people sleeping in what is called a bunk room. Does it seem odd that there isn't another exit (one at each side or possibly even) somewhere? That or do you think they died from smoke inhalation? Either way, what a tragedy.
There was an exit out of the stern, but it was very tight and luggage/equipment may have been blocking it. It was also the rsposonsibiity of the crew (among other things) to make sure passengers knew where the exits were. They believe most died of smoke inhalation.


https://nypost.com/2019/09/03/take-a-look-inside-the-doomed-santa-cruz-boat-conception/
 
I can most certainly see how finding an exit, fog of sleep, pitch black, etc would be near impossible there in that video. Even in the best of circumstances. What a tragedy and while I realize most boats are cramped, that's a perfect example of why they shouldn't be.
 
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went to high school with the mom in the car. didnt know her well saw her in passing...but didnt realize it was her until my whole timeline was lit with it on social media
 
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