UPDATE 5-No passengers survive California dive boat fire, victim details surface


Reuters | Santa Barbara | Updated: 04-09-2019 02:27 IST | Created: 04-09-2019 02:25 IST
UPDATE 5-No passengers survive California dive boat fire, victim details surface
Representative image Image Credit: ANI
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None of a dive boat's 34 passengers survived a fast-moving fire that sunk it off California's Santa Cruz Island, officials said on Tuesday, as recovery workers prepared to try to retrieve 14 bodies still believed to be on the vessel or in the ocean. A memorial to the victims of the blaze aboard the 75-foot (23 meter) Conception ship grew, with photographs, notes and flowers on a dock not far from where the ship went down in the early Monday morning blaze and remained under more than 60 feet (18 meters) of water.

Scant details about the victims, who range in age from 17 to 60, began to surface as emergency workers planned to use DNA analysis to positively identify the badly-burned remains of the 20 bodies recovered so far. "Sad news: Santa Cruz based trip. Two classmates of my son’s at Pacific Collegiate School and at least two parents on board," video producer Romney Dunbar said on Facebook.

A trio of tearful young adults hugged one another in front of the memorial, too distraught to speak because of what they said was the death of a dear friend. Behind them a photograph of a smiling young couple included a note, "I love you Allie - and you know I always will! I'll miss you forever. Rob" Officials said DNA was needed for positive identification of the 11 female and 9 male victims recovered so far, most of them residents of the Santa Cruz and San Jose area, authorities said.

The boat captain was among five members of the six-person crew who were above deck on the bridge and managed to escape in an inflatable boat. The single crew member who did not survive appeared to have been sleeping below deck with the passengers when the fire broke out. An investigation was underway to determine the cause of the blaze, as the search for survivors was ended.

"There were several other victims that were seen by the divers - between four and six - that are still between the wreckage, but due to the position of the boat they were unable to be recovered before nightfall," Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown told a news conference. "Today, efforts will be made to stabilize the boat so that divers can safely enter it, search it and recover additional victims." As the flames engulfed the boat, a man placed a desperate call to the Coast Guard, gasping for help in the smoky fire.

"Mayday, mayday, mayday!" he said in a recording of the call. "That's a distress, this is the Coast Guard Sector Los Angeles on channel 1-6, what is your position ... and number of persons on board? Over," the dispatcher answered.

"Twenty-nine. Twenty-nine POB," said the man in the somewhat inaudible call. "I can't breathe!... Twenty-nine POB." The dispatcher requested the GPS location of the vessel at least two more times but the caller apparently fails to respond.

Kristy Finstad, 41, was leading the dive trip on the Conception, according to a Facebook post shared on Monday by her brother, Brett Harmeling. Finstad, a scuba diving instructor and marine biologist, was one of the owners of Worldwide Diving Adventures, the firm that chartered the boat for a three-day excursion to the Channel Islands.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

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