re: Captain faces 10 years in jail for fiery deaths of 34 people aboard California scuba boat

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"I hate the term accident in this case because, in my opinion, it is not an accident if you fail to operate your company safely", and NTSB Chairman Robert Sumwalt admonished Truth Aquatics to "clean up your act."[80] In the report synopsis, the NTSB also concluded "Truth Aquatics had been deviating from required safe practices for some time" and added that "Truth Aquatics provided ineffective safety oversight of its vessels' operations", based on observations of existing unsafe practices, including the lack of a roving patrol, failure to train the crew, and failure to hold emergency drills.

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Uncredentialed deckhands were allowed to direct movement of the vessel, contradicting Subchapter T regulations. New crewmembers were not required to read and understand emergency procedures prior to getting underway. Fire drills were not held regularly. Passenger briefings were not conducted as soon as possible after leaving port. Collectively, the NTSB called it "a habitual disregard for rules, policies, and procedures" and the resulting normalization of deviance could have been discovered earlier if Truth Aquatics "had been actively engaged in ensuring the safe practices required by regulations were being followed".

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