Coast Guard officials said eight people were killed and 26 went missing after a 75-foot commercial diving boat erupted in flames near the shoreline of Santa Cruz Island in California early Monday.
Many aboard the vessel Conception were thought to be sleeping below deck when the fire broke out in the predawn hours. Authorities continued their search Monday for possible survivors as the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s coroner office prepared for a mass casualty incident.
“This isn’t a day we wanted to wake up to for Labor Day and it’s a very tragic event,” said Coast Guard Capt. Monica Rochester. “I think we should all be prepared to move into the worst outcome.”
Authorities identified four of the victims as two men and two women and said they will need to be identified through DNA. Four additional victims were found on the ocean floor 64 feet down, near where the boat sank . Dive teams are working to recover those bodies, but what’s left of the boat remains unstable, said Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown.
Five crew members were already awake when the fire erupted and jumped off the boat, which was 20 yards off shore of the north side of Santa Cruz Island near the Ventura County coast, Rochester said. One crew member remains unaccounted for.
“Our hearts go out to the families of the victims of this terrible tragedy,” Brown said. “We understand the tremendous burden they are under right now.”
Around 3:15 a.m., Coast Guard Sector Los Angeles-Long Beach watchstanders overheard a mayday call of the boat on fire, according to the agency.
In the garbled emergency call, a man says there are 39 people aboard.
“I can’t breathe,” the man frantically says.
The five crew members, two with leg injuries, were rescued by a good Samaritan boat, the Grape Escape, according to the agency.
“You can imagine that of all the scenarios, to be in a remote location, have a fire that occurs, have limited, if any, firefighting capabilities … and to have all of a sudden a fire that spread very, very rapidly — you couldn’t ask for a worse situation,” Brown said.
Shirley Hansen and her husband, Bob, were jarred awake about 3:30 a.m. by the sound of pounding on the side of their 60-foot fishing boat.
The crew had escaped the Conception by jumping into the ocean, retrieving a dinghy and paddling 200 yards to the Hansens’ boat, the Grape Escape, Shirley Hansen said in an interview.
The crew was distraught, some wearing only underwear, she said. One man told the Hansens that his girlfriend was still below deck on the Conception. Another man cried, describing how they had celebrated three passengers’ birthdays hours earlier, including that of a 17-year-old girl who was on the diving trip with her parents.
Shirley Hansen said she could see the Conception ablaze from her boat and said there was so much smoke that she had to use an inhaler.
As the Hansens handed out blankets and clothes to the crew, two of the men got back into the dinghy to see if anyone else had jumped overboard.
“But they came back and there was no one that they found,” Shirley Hansen said.
As the fog lifted Monday at 2 p.m., at least three rescue vessels were at sea near the sunken dive boat, located in a remote cove at the northernmost end of Santa Cruz Island.
In the shadow of Santa Cruz Island’s headlands and rocky fingers a small craft had raised a red-and-white striped flag indicating that there were divers in the water.
Nearby, a Coast Guard cutter sliced through the water, warding off all non-rescue boat traffic: “The captain has extended the security zone to 1 mile.”
Family and friends seek information
Kristy Finstad, 41, was helping to lead the Labor Day excursion on the Conception. Hours after the disaster, Finstad’s family had not heard from their daughter, a marine biologist who worked for the family company, Worldwide Diving Adventures.
“They’ve been searching for a long time now,” said her brother, Brett Harmeling, 31. “She’s extremely strong-willed and very adventurous. If there was a 1% chance of her making it, she would have made it.”
Finstad’s mother founded Worldwide Diving Adventures in 1972, and Finstad grew up with a love of the ocean and of marine life. She studied marine biology at UC Santa Cruz and held multiple jobs related to marine life and the ocean, including performing research dives for the Australian Institute of Marine Science and writing a restoration guidebook for the California Coastal Commission.
“She has an extraordinary depth of knowledge,” Harmeling said. “Every time I’m on a dive trip with her, she goes above and beyond. She’ll go underwater and point out something, and then after the dive, she’ll explain exactly what it was and why it’s important.”
Authorities have set up a family assistance center at Earl Warren Showgrounds in Santa Barbara. A family information line has been opened at (833) 688-5551.
Several charter operations run diving expeditions around the Channel Islands. The charters typically take off from Ventura and Santa Barbara Harbor for several days.
The boat departed from its base in Santa Barbara Harbor on Saturday morning and was scheduled for a three-day trip.
