VIDEO SHOWS BOAT FIRE VICTIMS DIDN’T DIE IN THEIR SLEEP
Conception divers trapped below deck looked for way out
Following the horrific Conception boat fire in 2019, authorities offered a small solace: The 33 divers and one crew member had died of smoke inhalation and may have perished in their sleep without suffering.
That theory was called into question when some of the dead were found to have been wearing their shoes, leading investigators to speculate they had tried to escape before the ship was engulfed in flames.
Now, more than three years after one of the country’s deadliest maritime accidents, a sobering piece of evidence has put the question to rest, showing conclusively that the divers were awake and searching for a way off the boat in the minutes after crew members had jumped into the water.
A 24-second video federal investigators recovered from a victim’s badly damaged phone recorded the relatively calm, but increasingly desperate scene as smoke seeped below deck into the dive boat’s bunk room, according to relatives of two unrelated victims who viewed the footage, as well as authorities involved in the investigation who confirmed the contents of the video.
In the video, “the fire alarm is going off, you see smoke coming in from some of the fans and down the stairwell,” said a man who lost his sister in the fire. “People are walking around looking for a way to get out. Someone says, ‘Hey, there’s got to be another way out of here,’ and their voices weren’t panicked at first.”
The cellphone that recorded the video, the man said, seems to have been set down purposefully to capture the scene in the cramped cabin as smoke collects at first along the ceiling and then begins to fill the room.
“They couldn’t find a way out,” said the man, who asked not to be identified to protect his privacy.
In the early morning hours on Labor Day 2019, the 75-foot, wood-hulled Conception was anchored just off Santa Cruz Island, about 27 miles from Santa Barbara, during a three-day dive trip. Five members of the crew were sleeping in the wheelhouse area atop the threedeck vessel, while 33 recreational divers and a crew member slept in a bunk room on the bottom level.
According to a National Transportation Safety Board report that pieced together how the tragedy unfolded, soon after a crew member awoke to popping and crackling noises, and saw a glow coming from the middle deck, the ship’s captain, Jerry Boylan, made a mayday call to the Coast Guard at 3:14 a.m. Crew members attempted to get down to the lower decks but were turned back by flames. Boylan and the others jumped overboard.
“I opened both doors and smoke filled the wheelhouse,” Boylan wrote in an account to investigators saying he had been forced to leap into the water because of the intensity of the fire.
A crew member recalled to investigators that when Boylan came to the surface of the water, he said, “Oh my God, all those people.”
Boylan told investigators he tried to reboard the boat but could not. “Flames were coming up to the side doors,” he recalled. The boat’s galley on the middle floor was fully engulfed and he saw “flames coming out all windows.”
Boylan and the other crew members were already in the water when the diver who made the video started recording at 3:17 a.m., three minutes after Boylan made the mayday call, according to relatives of the victims who said FBI agents explained the sequence of events to them.
A couple whose son died in the fire said they watched the video at an FBI office last month. The mother, who asked not to be named, recalled that faces were discernible and that she saw a man “pull up his cowl-neck shirt to shield himself from the smoke.”
She said that man and another diver were trying to find a way out near the stairwell that led to the galley on the floor above.
“They didn’t die in their sleep like they first said,” the mother said. “They died terrified, knowing they were going to die. Even there at the end, they weren’t giving up. They are trying to problem-solve.”
By the time the video was recorded, investigators have concluded, flames had engulfed the Conception’s main deck and galley, blocking the stairway to the bunk room as well as a small emergency hatch. A Santa Barbara County coroner’s report determined all 34 people died of smoke inhalation. The only survivors were the five crew members who jumped into the water.
Laura Eimiller, an FBI spokeswoman, declined to comment on the video, but said, “It is not uncommon for the FBI to share details with family members of victims.”