Five breathless men soaking wet and shivering in their underwear told the Hansens of a fire that had ravaged their 75-foot commercial scuba diving vessel, the Conception, only several hundred feet away.
The men, all crew members, had escaped one of California’s worst maritime disasters in decades, a fire that authorities said Monday appeared to have claimed dozens of lives.
The desperation became clear to Bob Hansen when he stepped outside his cabin and saw the glow of the raging fire in the dark. In an interview, he said he had seen the Conception completely engulfed in flames, “from stem to stern.”
In a distress call apparently made from the Conception and recorded by a Ventura County Marine radio channel, a man yells, “Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!” Through the distortion and crackle of the radio call, the man’s desperation is apparent. “I can’t breathe!” he screams.
Rescue crews scoured the waters south of Santa Barbara and west of Los Angeles throughout the day Monday, hoping they might find survivors from the Conception, which had been on a three-day holiday excursion to the Channel Islands.
Passengers on the Conception slept in a single room packed with bunk beds below deck, according to a floor plan of the boat on the website of Truth Aquatics, the company that operated the vessel and is based in Santa Barbara.
It was too early Monday to say whether negligence had played any role in the fire. “The vessel has been in full compliance,” a Coast Guard spokeswoman, Capt. Monica Rochester, said. The boat was equipped with a fire suppression system in the engine room.
Rochester said the crew members were the only known survivors from the Conception and that 34 people were still missing. Many passengers, she said, were presumed to have been sleeping when the fire broke out.
At the time of the fire, the Conception was moored in Platts Harbor, north of Santa Cruz Island. At sunrise it was smoldering but still afloat, according to a photograph posted by the Santa Barbara Fire Department. It sank later that morning, around 20 yards from shore.
This article originally appeared in
.