SANTA BARBARA, Calif. (AP) — Dozens of people trapped on a scuba diving boat that caught fire off the Southern California coast appear to have died from smoke inhalation, not burns, authorities said Friday.
“The indicators are from the preliminary examination of the bodies that the victims died prior to being burned,” Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown said. “The burn damage to the victims was post-mortem.”
More than half the 34 people killed as they slept in bunks below deck early Monday have been positively identified through DNA, and their family members around the world are being notified, Brown told reporters. Divers are searching for the one body that still has not been found.
Five crew members jumped overboard after trying to rescue the 33 scuba divers and one crew member whose escape routes were blocked by fire, federal authorities and the boat’s owner said. The crew, including the captain, said they were driven back by flames, smoke and heat.
Multiple investigations into the disaster are focused on determining what happened and have not become a criminal probe, though Brown said charges are possible.
Notifying families that their loved ones were aboard the Conception and gathering DNA to identify remains burned beyond recognition has taken an extraordinary worldwide effort.
A mother in Japan was told Thursday that her child was on the boat. The FBI also had to deliver the news to a family in Singapore and relatives from India who flew into California, Brown said.
The remains of 18 people have been positively identified, and the sheriff released the names of nine whose families have been notified.
A salvage crew working with the Coast Guard was trying to recover the ship that sank in 60 feet (18 meters) of water off the rugged Channel Islands, where the boat took a three-day excursion.
Speculation has grown about whether the captain and four other crew members who survived had tried to help the others before jumping from the flaming vessel. But they said that by the time they saw flames, it was too late.
The crew members told investigators a “harrowing story” about the moments after the blaze erupted before dawn Monday as it lay at anchor, Jennifer Homendy of the National Transportation Safety Board said Thursday.
They jumped from the bridge area to the main deck — one breaking a leg in the effort — and tried to get through the double doors of the galley, but they were on fire.
That cut off both escape routes from the sleeping quarters: a stairway and an escape hatch that exited in the galley area. The crew then tried, but failed, to get into windows at the front of the vessel.
“At that point, due to heat, flames and smoke, the crew had to jump from the boat,” Homendy said.
Captain Jerry Boylan stayed aboard trying to send radio distress calls and was last in the water, said Glen Fritzler, co-owner of Truth Aquatics Inc. of Santa Barbara, which operated Conception.
“The other crew at a certain point when the flames had engulfed the boat and they were in the water, they could see Jerry jump from the upper deck, a long jump. And there was a trail of smoke following him. They thought he was on fire,” Fritzler told KEYT-TV in Santa Barbara.
