Federal documents show that crew members on a dive boat that caught fire, killing 34 people as they slept below deck, were not trained in emergency procedures, according to the Associated Press. Last September, the boat caught fire, killing 34. A crew member reported seeing sparks after plugging in his cellphone — just hours before the fire. One rescuer said that the all-wooden hull of the boat and diesel fuel made the fire volatile. Authorities are still determining what caused the fire aboard Conception.
A Global Ocean Security Technologies system stopped thieves from an attempted electronics theft not once, but twice, on an Everglades 435. The boat was equipped with GOST’s NT-Evolution 2.0 system and when the sensor was tripped, triggering the siren, strobe and flashing tower and hardtop lights, the thieves scattered. The owner, Kenny McLeskey, said he once lost all his MFDs when the GOST had been disarmed at a boatyard. “Since then, I never leave it anywhere without arming my system,” said McLeskey in a statement. “Unfortunately, five other boats at the marina and several more at the neighboring marina had no defense and the thieves made off with tens of thousands worth of electronics.”
