Posted on 12/15/2019 10:38:53 AM PST by BenLurkin
Nearly a year before 34 people were killed in a fire aboard the dive boat Conception, a second vessel owned by the same charter company began a three-day voyage around the Channel Islands.
Divers on the Vision charged numerous lithium-ion batteries installed in cameras, phones, computers and even underwater scooters with an array of power outlets in the salon area. At some point, one of those batteries began to smolder as it was charging. An alarmed crew member quickly tossed it into the water, preventing the fire from spreading, a witness and several sources told The Times.
(Excerpt) Read more at ktla.com ...
Outlaw that kind of battery being on a ship.
We need them to store solar power. What gives?
Their biggest failure: The crew had no night watch. They were all asleep!
There are no easy fixes for this.
Why mention the Coast Guard in this article?
They didn’t start the fire.
I found that usually, three safety protocols have to be violated for a tragedy like this to happen.
Everyone wants an easy fix.
The Coast Guard can’t be on every ship all the time.
That doesn’t stop the primary issues : ignorance, laziness, inability to perform basic cost benefit analysis for ourselves.
Ultimately we are responsible for ourselves and if there is a 1 in a 10,000 chance of something deadly happening can the average person recognize it, think through it and make decision about increasing the odds. Not much anymore.
But managed to save themselves.
A lithium fire is a hot fire.
Outlaw that kind of battery being on a ship.
Then you ‘outlaw’ pretty much every electronic device in use today. Like cellphones, lights, radios, even a lot of the equipment on the boat itself.
So true, no one on watch, battery charging in poor location, fire detection equipment inadequate. And finally, battery charging unsafe with this type of battery—some charging system needs to be developed to fail in a safe mode for ship and air use.
The real problem with lithium battery fires is they produce dense clouds of toxic smoke just before they burst into flames.
In an enclosed area like the boat, no one would be able to breath or see to escape.
The chargers aren't the problem. The problem is cheap chi-com lithium batteries that don't have the protection circuit.
Lithium batteries are sensitive to over-charging, over-discharging and having the current drawn out faster than the battery is rated to deliver.
The protection circuit prevents all of these conditions.
Charge them only on deck. Build a box with handls and strapped to the deck, place batteries in to charge.
If a fire then shove the box overboard.
If its only possible to get this in the battery, these uses are in trouble. I was thinking that a solution might be to have a monitor on all the chargers such that a shift towards a dangerous current level would shut things down and disconnect from the battery that was over charging or over heating or whatever. I agree that buying good hardware would be a help too, but the ship needed something for ship protection. (obviously) and the battery charger should have been located away from living quarters, and maybe on an electable shelf. Also, the ship was well aware that divers brought their own equipment and underwater lights, cameras, and other things would come off the shelves from the stores.
When this happened all I could think was that safety was completely overlooked, and then the crew all bedded down.
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