Report on Boat Fire Concludes Crew Was Asleep When Fire Began: Questions remain after blaze

Wall Street Journal ^ | September 12, 2019 | Ben Kesling

[21twelve]

“Therefore, this accident was avoidable by breaking any one of the risk factors.”

Many (most?) accidents are caused by cascading failures. One of the reasons why “near misses” are reported in most industries.

Most of the backup systems work most of the time. I wonder how many times on a ship (or at home) the smoke alarm sounds off on a smoldering power strip and the owner awakens and disconnects it or whatever?

But the smoke alarm doesn't sound. Or it does, but the fire extinguisher fails, etc.

One time our dishwasher overheated. It wasn't smoking enough that the alarm in the hallway sounded - but our infant daughter was crying. Nothing we did (feeding, checking her diaper, etc.) would calm her down. She ALWAYS calmed down with that stuff. After 10 minutes in the bedroom dealing with that stuff she was still crying.

So I walked her up and down the hallway. That still didn't calm her down.

I walked through the kitchen and smelled an odd plastic smell by the dishwasher. I went back into the bedroom to give my crying daughter to my wife. I went back to the kitchen and cracked open the dishwasher. The heating element was red hot and the plastic was melting.

I ran downstairs and hit the breaker for it.

By the time I got back upstairs, my daughter was sound asleep!

Smoke alarms and fire extinguishers are great to have. So are guardian angels!

[KC_for_Freedom]

A good post, and pets too have been credited with smoke detection.

I had a short in a circuit in my basement that was inside a steel conduit but was shorting to the conduit. I found it by sound when I was working in the basement, when I discovered the problem, the short had traversed over four feet of the conduit by melting the steel. It never tripped the breaker but luckily it also never encountered something flammable, which my basement had in abundance.

I was very lucky and I have always prided myself in my safety awareness. The conduit was installed by a prior homeowner and I suppose worked the way it was supposed to except for being able to arc weld without popping a breaker.