LOS ANGELES, CA — Authorities Sunday morning raided the Santa Barbara offices of the diving company that owns the ill-fated Conception, a dramatic development in the investigation of the Labor Day boat fire that killed almost three dozen people.
As first reported by theLos Angeles Times, the FBI, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and the U.S. Coast Guard served warrants at the headquarters of Truth Aquatics as well as at two other boats owned by the diving company.
No one was arrested in the raids, but investigators took photos and boxes as part of the ongoing investigation, said Lt. Eric Raney with the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office told The Times. It remains unclear if criminal charges would be filed in the fire that killed 34 people, most of whom were sleeping below deck as the boat anchored off Santa Cruz Island.
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“I see it as par for the course,” Raney told The Times. “You can only do so much with your basic investigative efforts, and at some point you have to use a search warrant as the means to collect information.”
The final missing body has yet to be recovered, but already legal wrangling has begun over liability for the tragedy, and officials are looking at possible safety deficiencies and lapses in crew training. The search warrant is a sign that authorities suspect criminal charges are possible. Law enforcement sources told The Times, a key questions will be whether the boat had the required roaming night watchman, who would alert passengers in the event of a fire or other dangers.
In the aftermath of the tragedy, harrowing tales of survival and devastation emerged.
Five crew members who were sleeping above deck were awakened by the blaze, and they jumped to a lower level, causing one person to break a leg. The crew couldn’t get to the sleeping passengers, who were trapped below deck because the fire blocked the only two escape routes.
Eventually, the five crew members aboard Conception jumped from the burning ship and were evacuated aboard a good Samaritan pleasure craft, according to U.S. Coast Guard Capt. Monica Rochester. Some of the crew members rowed back to the burning craft in a dinghy in a search for survivors, but there were none. Investigators believe the 34 victims died of smoke inhalation.
The owner of the Conception filed a legal petition in federal court, asking a judge to limit possible awards to victims’ families to $0, the same value of the boat after it burned and sank to the bottom of the ocean.
The National Transportation Safety Board began its investigation Tuesday morning with a team of 16 investigators who specialize in engineering, operation and fire prevention and expected to be on site for a week to 10 days, working with the Coast Guard and first responders.
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Board member Jennifer Homendy told reporters “this was a terrible tragedy” and said she “cannot imagine what the families are going through.”
Homendy said investigators first want to determine the cause of the fire and what can be done to prevent similar tragedies.
The boat was not required to have any type of black box recording device, the NTSB said.
One of the key questions investigators will look into is why no one below deck was able to escape the flames, said Majorie Murtagh Cooke, the former director of the NTSB Office of Marine Safety.
“With 30-plus people dying, the investigation could lead to changes in the way vessels are designed or protected depending on the findings,” Cooke told the Los Angeles Times.
City News Service contributed to this report.