The National Transportation Safety Board is urging the Coast Guard to adopt safety management regulations for small passenger vessels, one of the recommendations that the NTSB made as a result of the fire on the commercial dive boat Conception that killed 34 people off Southern California in September, 2019.
Safety management systems (SMS) regulations now are now looser for smaller passenger vessels than they are for cargo ships and workboats. But the NTSB has asked the Coast Guard to tighten them since 2005. Congress approved a tightening in 2010.
For its part, the Coast Guard says it has made some progress on tighter regulations since the Conception fire, but the NTSB says a tightening has been stalled since 2021.
“While the Coast Guard has implemented so many of our recommendations from the Conception investigation, we’ve yet to see the necessary action taken on one of the most important ones: safety management systems,” said Jennifer Homendy, chairman of the NTSB. “We’ve been advocating for SMS on passenger vessels for nearly two decades. The public can’t afford to wait any longer.”
The Coast Guard authorization act of 2020, passed by Congress, requires the Coast Guard to carry out all the NTSB’s recommendations from the Conception investigation, including the SMS requirement. The next year the Coast Guard approved many of the interim rules included in the NTSB recommendations, but not the one for SMS.
The NTSB’s investigation into the Conception fire cited the lack of a roving watchstander at night and the lack of emergency escape routes for passengers. The NTSB notes that towing vessels must comply with a SMS policy, even though they carry just a fraction of the number of people on board a vessel such as the Conception.
