Quote Originally Posted by Sidewinder View Post
Quote Originally Posted by Dan Druff View Post
BUMP

Turned out that there were criminal charges, though this wasn't initially expected. The 67-year-old captain, Jerry Boylan, was charged via an 1800s federal law which was meant to charge negligent steamboat captains! The utilization of this law in the 21st century is super rare.

Boylan was accused of “misconduct, negligence and inattention” by failing to train his crew, conduct fire drills and have a roving night watchman on the boat when the fire ignited. He was the one who made the panicked call to 911 in the original post, which was at first wrongly attributed to a passenger.

In a similar move to what MGM did after the 2017 Stephen Paddock shooting, the boat owners are suing the victims in federal court in order to avoid being held responsible for any civil damages. I'm not sure how this works, but MGM did the same thing for the same reason. Despite this, 32 families (out of 34 victims) are suing the owners.

The captain pled not guilty in February 2021. Not sure what has happened since.

https://ktla.com/news/local-news/cap...hat-killed-34/
Is it that hard to yell down to the sleeping people and tell them to GTFO ? I assume this happened but surely 1 person could of escaped the death oven? Like no way the crew just bailed and didnt try to tell anyone else to wake up and leave? Or was the fire blocking both exits?
There was only one real exit, plus one fail escape hatch. Both were blocked.

Apparently they were supposed to be actively checking that everything was ok, and weren't. By the time they noticed the fire, it was too late.