Mayday, Mayday ... I can’t breathe!
SOS from boat blaze as children are among 34 dead
the captain of a dive boat made a frantic distress call as dozens of his passengers burned alive, saying: ‘Mayday, mayday, mayday... I can’t breathe’.
Among the 34 who died were two schoolchildren and a 17year-old girl celebrating her birthday.
In one of America’s worst modern civilian maritime disasters, the 75ft dive boat Conception caught fire at 3am local time on Monday off Santa Cruz Island, 80 miles west of Los Angeles.
the horror of the tragedy is laid bare in the transcript of the distress call to the US Coast Guard.
trying to get to grips with the situation, a coast guard officer asks the captain: ‘there are people on board the vessel that’s on fire and they can’t get off? ‘Can you get back on board?’ the captain appears to confirm the crew had jumped off and the vessel was ‘fully engulfed’.
the bodies of 11 women and nine men have been recovered from the water, while the remains of up to six more people have been found in the wreckage but not yet brought to the surface.
A 26-year-old crew member is thought to be among the dead, many of whom were so badly burned that they will have to be identified by their DNA.
Fourteen people are still officially listed as missing, inlcuding marine biologist Kirsty Finstead, 41, who helped organise the trip.
her brother, Brett harmeling, said she remained missing, adding: ‘It’s not looking good.’
Officials called off their search efforts yesterday.
Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bob Brown said that at its last inspection the vessel contained all necessary fixed and portable fire extinguishers. But he added: ‘It was a wooden boat so essentially everything was flammable. Fire is the scourge of any ship. to be in a remote location asleep and have a fire spread quickly... you couldn’t ask for a worse situation.’
he said passengers were trapped below deck, adding: ‘there was a stairwell and an escape hatch, but it would appear that both of those were blocked by fire.’ the blaze took hold as holidaymakers slept in a 46-bunk room below deck.
Five crew who were on deck – believed to include the captain – managed to escape in a dinghy and get to a boat nearby, the Grape escape, owned by Shirley hansen and her husband, Bob.
the couple were woken by the men banging on the side. Mrs hansen said that the men were wearing only their underwear and one appeared to have broken his leg. ‘the other boat was totally engulfed in flames, from stem to stern,’ Mr hansen said.
‘I could see fire coming through holes on the side. there were explosions every few beats. It was horrendous.’ he said two of the crew took the dinghy back to the boat to rescue survivors, but failed to find anyone. the Conception eventually sank in 64ft of water just 20 yards offshore.