SANTA CRUZ — Untold heartbreak and grief permeated communities across Santa Cruz and the greater Bay Area Tuesday as authorities revealed that the region was home to most of victims of a devastating fire on a diving boat off the coast of Southern California.
Hope that anyone beyond five crew members escaped the inferno faded early Tuesday as the Coast Guard ended its search for survivors from the 75-foot vessel Conception, effectively affirming that 34 people — out of the 39 total passengers and crew —are presumed dead following the disaster.
Among those victims were five members of a Stockton family, a father and daughter from Fremont, two Santa Cruz high school students and the owner of the Santa Cruz diving outfitter that had hired the boat for a Labor Day excurion, according to accounts from family and friends that emerged as authorities worked to identify the dead.
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“The majority of the people on this trip appeared to have been from the Santa Cruz-San Jose-Bay Area region,” Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown said at a press conference.
The National Transportation Safety Board has joined the Coast Guard in investigating the cause of the fire, which broke out around 3 a.m. Monday. There was “no indication at all” that any of the people sleeping below deck were able to escape, Brown said, after the fire apparently blocked both of the exit points out of the quarters.
Search crews have recovered the bodies of 20 people, 11 female and nine male, Brown said, and divers spotted five additional bodies, though they were not immediately able to recover them. Nine people were still missing as of Tuesday evening.
Brown said officials are still collecting information about the ages and hometowns of the victims, adding that they are now asking family members for DNA samples to confirm those victims’ identities.
Coast Guard Capt. Monica Rochester said crews suspended their search for survivors around 9:40 a.m. Tuesday after they did not see new signs of distress or debris. After seven rescue missions spread over 24 hours, scouring an area of about 160 square miles, Coast Guard crews have now shifted their efforts to finding remains and recovering the vessel.
“Our hearts, our thoughts are with the family and friends of the victims,” she said.
‘Blocked by fire’
Five crew members, whose quarters were above the boat’s deck on the highest of the vessel’s three levels, were able to escape, making their way to a nearby pleasure vessel, The Grape Escape, according to the Coast Guard. Two had minor injuries.
Bob and Shirley Hansen, who own The Grape Escape, told The New York Times they were asleep when they heard pounding on the side vessel about 3:30 a.m. That’s when they said they saw Conception completely engulfed.
“I could see the fire coming through holes on the side of the boat,” Bob Hansen said. “There were these explosions every few beats. You can’t prepare yourself for that. It was horrendous.”
Brown said that some of the explosions that occurred on the vessel may have been exploding scuba or propane tanks.
Authorities are still investigating how the victims died, Brown said, adding that DNA testing was needed because some of the bodies were badly burned in what he described as an “extraordinarily hot fire.”
“It is appearing as though the people who were below deck were trapped and unable to exit the vessel,” he said. “There was a stairwell to get down — the main entryway up and down — and there was an escape hatch. And it would appear as though both of those were blocked by fire.”
Communities learn of victims
Three sisters, their father and their stepmother were on the diving trip and were unaccounted for after the fire, according to a Facebook post Tuesday morning from their mother, Susana Solano Rosas, whose social media accounts identify her as a nurse for the Stockton Unified School District.
Rosas’ husband, Chris Rosas, said Tuesday afternoon that he and his wife were awaiting more information from authorities.
“We’re in Santa Barbara with all the other people who lost someone in the accident,” Chris Rosas said. “We’re all talking to each other, just being together.”
Two students from Pacific Collegiate School in Santa Cruz and the parents of one student were aboard the Conception, according to an email sent to the school community by head of school Maria C. Reitano.
“Our hearts and thoughts are with the families of the victims and those yet missing, particularly those of our students and parents on board,” Reitano wrote in a statement. “Right now, our priority as a school community is to support our students, staff, and families in the wake of this tragedy.”
Reitano said the dive outing was not a school-sponsored trip. The public charter school for grades 7 through 12 often ranks among the top high schools in California.
The Santa Cruz County Office of Education activated its School Emergency Response Team to ensure grief counselors and therapists would be at the school Tuesday to provide support, superintendent Faris Sabbah said.
Diving instructor Kristy Finstad, co-owner of Santa Cruz-based Worldwide Diving Adventures, the company that chartered the boat, had been leading the Labor Day diving trip to the Channel Islands, and was on board when the boat caught fire, according to a Facebook post by her brother, Brett Harmeling. He declined to comment further Tuesday.
Scott Chan, a physics teacher at American High School in Fremont, and his daughter — both avid divers were also among those missing, Pacific Scuba Divers, a Sunnyvale dive shop wrote in a Facebook post, calling Chan a “longtime patron.”
“Our heart goes out to families of Scott and other divers who were on the boat,” the post said.
‘I’ve never heard of an incident like this’
Conception, which run by Santa Barbara-based Truth Aquatics, was on a three-day excursion to Channel Islands National Park. A memorial outside Truth Aquatics in Santa Barbara Harbor grew Tuesday as mourners came to pay their respects.
Pacific Scuba Divers’ manager, Charles McKinven, said he had been aboard Conception in the past, noting the popular vessel was well-known among California divers.
“If you talk to any diver in the area who’s dived the Channel Islands, they’ve been on that boat,” McKinven said.
McKinven said a tragedy on this scale is virtually unheard of in diving.
“I think everybody pretty much is in shock that something like this could happen to such a big group of divers, in general,” he said.“I’ve been diving for forty-odd years, I’ve been teaching for 20 of those. I’ve never heard of an incident like this with a dive boat before.”
Charlie Cooper, co-owner of Aqua Safaris Scuba Center, a dive shop in Santa Cruz that has chartered trips with Truth Aquatics, said the company had a solid reputation among the diving community in California. Coast Guard records for the Conception show that while the boat had been cited for safety violations in recent years — including for fire safety issues — those violations were quickly addressed.
“Truth Aquatics is a very well-run organization, the boats are always in good shape,” Cooper said Tuesday. “There was never a minute when I had any reason to doubt that the safety and comfort of the passengers wasn’t the top priority of the captain and crew.”
He added that the tragedy would likely have a “long-term psychological impact” on the tight-knit community divers in Santa Cruz and the Bay Area.
“There’s no seven degrees of separation — it’s one or two,” Cooper said of the local diving scene. “If you don’t know a diver, then you know someone who knows them. So it hits very hard.”
“This tragedy may give people pause for some time,” Cooper said. But, he added, “eventually they’ll want to go back to doing what they love to do.”
Staff writers Leonardo Castañeda, Thy Vo, Nicholas Ibarra, and Erin Baldassari contributed reporting.
