SANTA BARBARA, California — High school students, a science teacher and his daughter, an adventurous marine biologist and a family of five celebrating a birthday are among those presumed to have died when fire tore through a scuba diving boat off the Southern California coast, trapping dozens of sleeping people below deck.
Authorities on Tuesday ended the search for survivors of Monday’s pre-dawn fire aboard the Conception. It was presumed that 34 people were dead.
The search for other survivors ended Tuesday. At least 20 bodies had been recovered and officials continued efforts to bring in others spotted on the ocean bed. Some may be inside the sunken boat.
A Catholic priest working at the center set up for relatives of people missing and presumed dead says he’s spoken with 15 to 20 relatives of those who were aboard.
Father Pedro Lopez of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Santa Barbara said Tuesday that he and other clergy members are trying to comfort the relatives and make sure they don’t spend time alone.
Lopez says “it’s just hard for them to process all of this.”
The only survivors were believed to be the captain and four crew members who were awake on the upper decks. They jumped off the front of the vessel, swam to an inflatable boat at the back and steered it to a ship anchored nearby.
But flames moved so quickly through the 75-foot vessel that it blocked both a narrow stairway and an escape hatch leading to the upper decks, giving those below virtually no chance of escaping, authorities said.
DNA will be needed to identify all the victims, and authorities will be using the same rapid analysis tool that identified victims of the deadly wildfire that devastated the Northern California town of Paradise last year, Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown said.
ABC affiliate KNXV-TV in Phoenix reported that an Arizona couple, Patricia Beitzinger and Neal Baltz, were on the trip.
“They went to heaven doing something they loved together,” Neal’s father, John Baltz, told the station.
The Conception, based in Santa Barbara Harbor, was owned by Santa Barbara-based Truth Aquatics, founded in 1974. A memorial at the harbor quickly grew as mourners came to pay their respects.
Actor Rob Lowe tweeted that he had been aboard the vessel many times. Dave Reid, who runs an underwater camera manufacturing business with his wife, Terry Schuller, also has traveled on the Conception and two other boats in Truth Aquatics’ fleet and said he considered all three among the best and safest.
Schuller said the company’s crews have always been meticulous in going over safety instructions at the beginning of every trip she’s been on.
“They tell you where the life jackets are, how to put them on … the exits, where the fire extinguishers are, on every single trip,” Schuller said.
Coast Guard records show the boat’s owners quickly addressed all safety violations from the last five years.
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