With that many people below one would think they would require two points of entry/exit.
Cant even imagine it being ventilated with no hatch
Was there ever a Coast Guard inspection of that boat?
With that many people below one would think they would require two points of entry/exit.
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The article says there was an escape hatch above one of the bunks.
The rule books are always subject to change ESPECIALLY following disasters like this. There is a pair of programs on the Smithsonian Channel, "Air Disasters" & "Maritime Disasters", showing such as this and how regulations are changed following the investigations. In one episode the comment was made about how operating manuals are written in blood!
Due to this being a public conveyance operating under US Coast Guard (USCG) auspices, this will almost certainly be a multiagency investigation with the USCG, NTSB and California agencies being involved. Final report will take several months.
How about a rehearsal on getting out in case of an emergency. I am a pilot of a small single engine airplane and briefing passengers in case of an emergency is part of the check list. One would think the same would apply on a boat.
Toward the stern, an escape hatch was situated above one of the bunks and led to the salon deck, which included the galley. "It's on a ceiling of the bunk room or the floor of the galley," said Bruce Rausch, 69, a veteran divemaster in Orange County and a retired San Onofre nuclear engineer who had been on more than a dozen dive trips aboard the Conception. "All you have to do is get up to a bunk and keep going up and you use the bunk as ladders."
Stairs on one end, escape hatch on the other.
I have over 800 dives off the Vision, Conception and Truth. spanning the last 20 years. Each bunk area has two points of egress. One down a stairway and a ladder at the far end of the bunk room, which exists topside. I can only imagine this fire started in the galley, which is above the bunk rooms. Glen and the captain of the Conception, Jerry Boylan are first rate people and imagine their sense of grief and ultimate responsibility for this tragic incident....
There were two exit points, a stairway up to the galley at the forward end of the cabin and an emergency escape hatch at the back that escapees would have to climb up b climbing a couple of bunks. Not what one would call an easy place to get escape from with 35 tightly packed bunks in a very small place.