The Marine Casualty Investigation Board (MCIB) has called for legislation to ensure that devices for gas detection and flame supervision are mandatory on all leisure craft.
Such devices should be compulsory on all craft where gas is used for cooking and/or heating, the MCIB recommends in its report on last year's gas explosion on a pleasure cruiser on the river Shannon.
Two of four passengers were injured in the explosion on board the 37-ft Santa Christina, a fibreglass inland waterway cruiser, which was hired at Carrick-on-Shannon, Co Leitrim, last September 18th.
The MCIB investigation found that the blast occurred when the engine started. The interior of the vessel was substantially damaged. A nine-year old girl, Deanna Kahlout, sustained burns on one side of her face and her mother, Mrs Maggie Kahlout, suffered minor injuries and shock. Both were treated by Dr Hazem Kahlout until the emergency services arrived and they were taken to hospital.
The MCIB found that the vessel's gas cooker had been left on and the gas exploded when the motor was ignited. The cooker had no flame supervision device, and the vessel was not fitted with a gas-leakage detection alarm. The vessel had been surveyed in November 1996, when no reference was made to the absence of such safety devices. It had also been examined under the Seacheck survey administered voluntarily by the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, but this survey did not involve gas installation safety devices.
Several official notices have been issued by the Department of Communications, Marine and Natural Resources, which warn of the dangers associated with gas installations on board vessels. However, the MCIB believes that safety devices should be made compulsory.
The Santa Christina report is one of four issued this week by the MCIB. An investigation into the loss of two lives in a small boat casualty in Inver Bay, Co Donegal, on July 17th, 1995, found the vessel was ill-equipped for the conditions in which it was working.
Charles Meehan (64) and his nephew, Stephen Meehan (20), had set out for the north-west of Inver Bay in the early hours of July 17th, 1995, to engage in netting for salmon. The 12-ft fibreglass boat was spotted partially sunk some 150 yards offshore by other salmon fishermen at about 7 a.m. One body was found floating about 50 yards away, and the second body was found close inshore about two hours later.
The MCIB report concludes that the small vessel was ill- equipped, with no reserve buoyancy to counteract flooding, and its use in the open waters of Inver Bay was an "unsafe practice".
The boat was undamaged when salvaged but any ingress of water, which led to a loss of buoyancy, would have caused a rapid sinking. The two men would have had no way of attracting attention when they found themselves in difficulties, and they had no flotation equipment to assist them when the boat foundered.
Reports into a collision involving the passenger vessel St Ciaran at New Ross, Co Wexford, in July 2002, and a gangway accident that claimed the life of one man in Cork port on January 21st of this year have also been issued by the MCIB.
