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The entire crew of the Conception was asleep when a deadly fire swept through their diving boat off the Santa Barbara coast, waking up after flames engulfed the cabin in the predawn darkness Sept. 2 and too late to rescue passengers, a preliminary federal report released Thursday confirmed.
The National Transportation Safety Board’s two-page summary of its preliminary investigation showed the five crew members above deck tried but failed to reach 33 doomed passengers and one crew member engulfed in flames and smoke below deck.
The disaster already has spawned a criminal investigation and widespread grief among several Bay Area families and the diving community in what is among the worst maritime disasters in the state’s history.
Chris Rosas, stepfather of three sisters — Angela Rose Quitasol, Evan Michel Quitasol and
Nicole Storm Quitasol — who died on board the Conception, said Thursday’s confirmation that all crew members were asleep when the fire broke out was “perplexing” and “horrible.”
“I’ve been aboard ships, and there’s always somebody who’s in charge and awake and sometimes full crews are awake,” Rosas said.
Investigators have not identified the source of the fire, according to the new report — which represents an initial, public step in an investigation that will likely take months, and involves multiple federal, state and local agencies, including the Coast Guard, FBI, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles.
U.S. Coast Guard said Thursday it could not comment on watch regulations or the NTSB’s preliminary report. But experts in maritime law and marine disasters have said the ship should have had at least one crew member on night watch — an assertion that posted federal regulations seem to affirm.
“You should have someone standing watch,” said Reginald E. McKamie, a Houston-based master mariner and maritime lawyer who has served as an expert witness in numerous cases. “You never know what might happen. You could have another vessel come by, but you also want to go around and have a fire watch to make sure nothing’s smoldering.”
The 75-foot Conception, operated by the Santa Barbara-based company Truth Aquatics Inc. was anchored off the Channel Islands during a Labor Day weekend diving excursion when the disaster struck in the early hours of Monday morning. The three-level, wood and fiberglass craft, custom built in 1981, carried 6 crew members and 33 passengers.
The NTSB report pieces together an emerging narrative of the fire, based largely on interviews with three of the five surviving crew members. The crew members told investigators they knew of no existing issues with mechanical or electric systems on the boat.
According to the NTSB account, an unidentified crew member who was asleep in the wheelhouse was awakened by a noise in the early morning hours and got up to investigate. That crew member saw a fire at the aft end of the sun deck, rising up from the salon compartment below, and alerted the four other crew members sleeping behind the upper deck wheelhouse. The captain radioed a distress message to the Coast Guard at 3:14 a.m.
Unable to use the aft ladder because it was on fire, the crew members jumped down to the main deck —causing one of them to break a leg in the process — and tried to access the salon and galley compartment to reach the passengers’ below-deck bunk room.
The only access to the passenger sleeping quarters, which were equipped with two locally sounding overhead smoke detectors, was down a ladder well in the forward, starboard corner of the salon or an emergency escape hatch on the aft end that also exited to the salon.
But the salon was fully engulfed by fire at the aft end, the report said, and by thick smoke at the forward end. Crew members were unable to open a window at the forward end and, overwhelmed by smoke, they jumped overboard.
Two crew members and the captain swam to the stern where they re-boarded the vessel. They opened the hatch to the engine room and saw no fire. With flames blocking their access to the aft doors of the salon, they launched a small skiff, picked up the other two crew members from the water and sped to a nearby recreational vessel, the Grape Escape. The Conception captain continued radioing for help while two other crew members returned to search for survivors around the burning hull.
The Coast Guard and local fire departments subsequently responded to the scene at Platts Harbor off Santa Cruz Island, about 25 miles offshore from Santa Barbara. But the Conception burned to the waterline by morning and sank in about 60 feet of water.
Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown said last week that many of the victims appeared to have suffocated from smoke inhalation.
The report also states that investigators have collected documents from previous inspections of the Conception and its sister vessel, Vision, and plan to study similar boats, including their alarm systems, evacuation routes and other safety measures.
Investigators from federal and local agencies have also been searching for clues amidst the sunken boat, which was finally raised from the ocean Thursday, and would be taken by barge to an “undisclosed secure location,” Brown said. A day earlier, rescue divers had recovered the last body from the wreckage.
All 34 victims have been identified and their families have been notified, Brown said, adding that all but one of the victims was positively identified through DNA. The remaining victim was identified through fingerprints, and authorities expect to get a full identification once an overseas family member submits a DNA reference sample, Brown said.
“May they all rest in peace and their families know that all of us involved in this sad operation continue to hold them in our hearts and in our prayers,” Brown said.
Since the disaster, the U.S. Coast Guard has offered new safety guidelines, including recommendations to limit on-board charging of cell phones, laptops and other devices powered by lithium ion batteries.
Federal prosecutors have filed search warrants against Truth Aquatics this week and already gathered evidence from the company’s two other leisure boats. The company filed a preemptive suit shortly after the fire, claiming owners Glen and Dana Fritzler properly maintained, equipped and staffed the vessel. Such a suit is a common tactic in boating incidents, and uses a 19th-century maritime law that allows ship owners to limit liability in future civil actions.
Any finding that crew members failed to follow required procedures could lead to criminal charges for the crew and jeopardize any liability protection for the owners.
“If the customs and procedures of ships are not followed and the owner and master knew that, then that’s a problem as far as whether the limitation will be successful or not,” McKamie said. “If it’s shown they were negligent and caused the deaths of these individuals, they could face serious criminal penalties.”
The tragedy upends the strong reputation Truth Aquatics had within the diving community.
“In my experience, they are very professional and safety-oriented organization,” said Stephen Walch, a Sacramento-area scuba instructor who has been on a number of diving trips with the company. “If they were required to have a watch at all times, there’s no getting around that.”
James Adamic, whose sister, Diana Adamic, brother-in-law Steve Salika, and niece Tia Salika — all of Santa Cruz — perished on the Conception, said someone should have been on watch and there should have been better alarms and evacuation training.
“I don’t think anyone was intentionally negligent, but it’s just the overconfidence,” Adamic said Thursday. “Once it got to the point that the crew was aware of it, these people had no chance.”
Coast Guard records indicated Truth Aquatics has had issues before with crew members falling asleep. On Oct. 13, 2008, the Conception’s sister ship Truth was carrying 24 passengers from Santa Cruz Island to Santa Rosa Island in the early morning hours when a crew member fell asleep at the helm and ran aground. There was no damage, deaths or injuries, and the Coast Guard did not consider it a serious incident. But the Coast Guard noted the mate was inadequately licensed and “evidence of improper watchstanding/rest periods.”
The Conception victims included 21 women and 13 men, ranging in age from teenagers to a 62-year-old. Among those lost was Santa Cruz diving instructor Kristy Finstad, 41, a marine biologist who ran Worldwide Diving Adventures and was a frequent passenger aboard the Conception. A Los Altos father and daughter, Scott and Kendra Chan, also perished.
“You’ve got 30-something lives on board,” McKamie said. “The custom of the sea is you need to be on fire watch.”
CONCEPTION BOAT FIRE VICTIMS
Thursday, Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown publicly identified all 34 victims of the Labor Day dive boat fire.
- Carol Adamic, 60, Santa Cruz
- Steve Salika, 55, Santa Cruz
- Tia Salika, 17, Santa Cruz
- Juha Pekka Ahopelto, 50, Sunnyvale
- Neal Baltz, Phoenix
- Patricia Beitzinger, Phoenix
- Vaidehi Campbell Williams, 41, Felton
- Raymond Scott Chan, Los Altos
- Kendra Chan, Oxnard
- Adrian Dahood-Fritz, 40, Sacramento
- Andrew Fritz, Sacramento
- Justin Dignam, 58, Anaheim
- Berenice Felipe, 16, Santa Cruz
- Lisa Fiedler, 52, Mill Valley
- Kristina “Kristy” Finstad, 41, Tamrick Pines
- Dan Garcia, Berkeley
- Yulia Krashennaya, 40, Berkeley
- Marybeth Guiney, 51, Santa Monica
- Yuko Hatano, 39, San Jose
- Alexandra “Allie” Kurtz, 26, Santa Barbara
- Xiang Lin, 45, Fremont
- Caroline McLaughlin, 35, Oakland
- Charles McIlvain, 44, Santa Monica
- Kaustubh Nirmal, 33, Stamford, Connecticut
- Sanjeeri DeoPujari, 31, Stamford, Connecticut
- Angela Rose Quitasol, 28, Stockton
- Evan Michel Quitasol, 37, Stockton
- Nicole Storm Quitasol, 31, Imperial Beach
- Michael Quitasol, 62, Stockton
- Fernisa Sison, 57, Stockton
- Sumil Sandhu, 45, Half Moon Bay
- Ted Strom, 62, Germantown, Tennessee
- Kristian Takvam, 34, San Francisco
- Wei Tan, 26, Goleta
