Friday, September 6, 2019

My older daughter was SCUBA certified when she was 9 years old

She's 30 now and married and was talking to me about the dive boat that burned up off Santa Cruz island off the California coast around Ventura and Santa Barbara. She was saying how they don't just use regular air to compress into tanks anymore because people have died from diesel and gas engine exhaust that got sucked into the air compressor by winds over time. So, even if the fire started in the galley it eventually spread likely to the oxygen tanks which would make any fire about 100 times hotter when the oxygen tank valves blew off in the heat. So, even if it started as propane or butane from a stove fire it eventually included compressed oxygen used to make compressed air in Scuba tanks by mixing 20% oxygen with 80 % Nitrogen. (or instead of Nitrogen they might use Helium for deeper dives but that is really expensive now so they might have just used Nitrogen.

So, once the propane or butane cooked the big oxygen tanks for filling the SCUBA tanks it was all over for the whole boat and anyone left on it. They just were NOT going to get out alive if they hadn't already been blown off the boat like the crew in the initial explosions and fire. Nitrogen doesn't burn I don't think at all as it is sort of an inert gas that comprises 80% of the atmosphere of earth whereas oxygen is 20% of the atmosphere of earth at sea level.

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