The National Transportation Safety Board sharply criticized the owners and captain of the 75-foot dive boat Conception that burned and sank off Southern California last year, killing 34 people, for not posting a night watch and for failing to train the crew in how to handle emergencies.
In a virtual meeting of the five-member board, NTSB Chairman Robert Sumwalt told Truth Aquatics, the Conception’s owner, to “clean up your act.” And board member Jennifer Homendy, who traveled to Santa Barbara after the fire and toured a sister ship of the Conception said, “I hate the term accident in this case because, in my opinion, it is not an accident of you fail to operate your company safely.”
The Conception was anchored in Platts Harbor off Santa Cruz Island on the night of Sept. 2, 2019, Labor Day weekend, with 33 passengers and six crew on board during a diving expedition. All 33 passengers, who were sleeping in a lower accommodation deck, and one crew member, died in the fire.
There were only two exits from the sleeping deck, and the NTSB reported they were blocked by flames. NTSB investigators found that some of the passengers’ bodies were wearing shoes when they were recovered, suggesting that they were trying to escape before they were overcome by smoke. The coroner reported that smoke inhalation was the cause of all 34 deaths.
Sumwalt said it was not possible to definitely determine what caused the fire, which started toward the back of the salon on the main deck where divers had plugged in phones, cameras and other items with combustible lithium ion batteries. But he said that “the propensity of lithium ion batteries to overheat” was the likely cause.
The NTSB said the captain’s failure to post a roving night watch allowed the fire to spread quickly and to trap the passengers below. It also criticized the Coast Guard for not requiring interconnected smoke detectors in all accommodations areas. Read more:
