Cat destroyed in Melbourne

[dirkdig]

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[arsenelupiga]

looks like cat can still float.
How long from start of fire and when fire brigade came ?

No fire extinguishers on boat ?

[GoingWalkabout]

Originally Posted by dirkdig

Spoke to the fire brigade guys who attended and there is no exact cause determined.
The owner returned to the cat after an appointment and noticed some smoke, went downstairs opened cabinets looking for it and then smoke/ fire took off.

They did say unrelated to this that a lot of boat fires now are due to solar panels and electrics left on in relation to solar panels charging. Where not long ago all that type stuff did not exist or was shut down when no one on board


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Thanks. Your post reinforces my doubts about some solar/battery systems being deployed on boats. Don't get me wrong. I'm a lover of Solar and plan on installing the most advanced panels and batteries available. Even to the point of hang with the cost just juice me up to the max. But I also plan on circumnavigation. So I don't want to worry about an instantaneous combustion on one of the seven seas or in some far flung foreign port. Unlike an electric car that has their batteries ignite you can slam on the breaks and flee on tera firma. A safe escape is not so easy out in the middle of the ocean.

So for me a thorough investigation of any boat fire that has solar/batteries systems aboard needs to be made. Let's find out the good the bad and the ugly so that if needed we will advance our understanding and take precautions accordingly. Also if we find a certain type of battery was involved and caused the fire, than we all need to know. In science we learn from failure and many times it is failure that leads to greater understanding and advancement. I suppose what is disturbing me apart from now the increased doubt raised is the lack of a serious investigation into major boat accidents. I know we don't have the resources of the aviation industry but I think it behooves all boaters to look at how we could have an investigative body of some sort that could pick through each accidents evidence to determine were possible the cause. Perhaps the marine insurance companies could fund such an accident body. Just a thought. In the meantime I'm going to look very closely on the incidents of solar/battery related fires and perhaps even look at how best to install an automatic electric fire suppression system around the critical suspect potential failure points such as the battery packs.

Again thanks for your information.

[dirkdig]

Fire was very fast from all reports.




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[arsenelupiga]

lesson 1: do not check smoke/fire without activated fireestinguisher in hand.