The families of the 34 people who died two years ago in a fire on the Santa Barbara-based Conception dive boat have filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Coast Guard, alleging that the agency repeatedly certified “a ‘fire trap’ small passenger vessel that was riddled with blatant life-safety violations.”
The civil complaint accuses the Coast Guard of a decades-long failure to enforce certification requirements, “and routinely allowing non-compliant and unsafe vessels on the water.”
The Conception, owned by Truth Aquatics, caught fire and sank near Santa Cruz Island in the early morning hours on Sept. 2, 2019, during a Labor Day Weekend scuba diving excursion.
At the time, the vessel was anchored offshore at Platts Harbor on the mainland side of the island.
There were 33 passengers and one crew member who perished, all of whom were sleeping in bunks on the bottom level of the three-deck vessel when the fire broke out.
They all died of smoke inhalation, according to the Santa Barbara County Coroner’s Bureau.
Five crew members who were asleep on the top deck — including Jerry Nehl Boylan, 67, the boat’s skipper, who has been indicted on 34 counts of seaman’s manslaughter — were able to flee the burning vessel and survived.
Following a lengthy investigation, the National Transportation Safety Board issued a report saying the intense fire started in the salon on the boat’s middle deck, but was unable to determine the exact cause.
However, there was considerable scrutiny on the vessel’s area for charging electronic devices (such as cell phones, underwater cameras, lights, etc.), including many powered by volatile lithium-ion batteries.
The civil complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, alleges that the Coast Guard acted negligently and carelessly by certifying the Conception, even though it was in violation of the Coast Guard’s “own protocols, procedures, and checklists” that were developed and enacted to ensure proper vessel design, engineering, and safe operations.
The lawsuit requests unspecified monetary damages.
The complaint also alleges that the Conception’s electrical system was inadequate, and did not comply with federal standards.
Instead, according to the lawsuit, “some electrical items in the bunk room were not composed of UL boat or marine cable called for by such standards, but rather of cheap, everyday Romex wire of the kind one would buy at Home Depot.”
The lawsuit further claims that the electrical system was overburdened by the nitrox machinery that generated air for the scuba tanks, and noted that the gallery stove and the nitrox system could not be operated at the same time.
Several of the passengers had taken part in a night dive the evening prior to the deadly fire, and many had plugged in cameras, lights and other devices to be charged afterwards.
The lawsuit also assert that the vessel had a “non-compliant fire-detection and suppression system, and passenger-accommodation escape routes that were in open and obvious violation of Coast Guard regulations.”
The National Transportation Safety Board found that the failings that led to the disaster included the company’s decision not to have a roving patrol, as required.
That failure, the board decided, allowed a fire of unknown cause to grow undetected.
The lawsuit was filed by John R. Hillsman of the San Francisco-based law firm McGuinn Hillsman and Palefsky; Jeffrey P. Goodman of the Philadelphia-based law firm Saltz Mongeluzzi & Bendesky; and Gretchen M. Nelson of Nelson & Fraenkel, LLP, which has offices in Los Angeles and San Francisco.
“There are two very different sides to the United States Coast Guard,” Goodman said in a press release. “First, you have the brave men and women who risk their lives in critical safety missions. They continue to have the appreciation and admiration of us all.
“However, the other side of the Coast Guard is responsible for ensuring that only properly certified vessels are on the waters. The Coast Guard has failed in that mission for decades by not enforcing certification requirements and routinely allowing non-compliant and unsafe vessels on the water.
“Had the Coast Guard properly inspected Conception, it never would have been certified, never set sail, and these 34 victims would not have lost their lives.”
The Coast Guard could not immediately be reached for comment on the lawsuit.
The Conception’s two sister ships — the Truth and the Vision — have been purchased by a new company, Channel Islands Expeditions, which has begun offering dive trips from Sea Landing at the Santa Barbara Harbor.
The new operators say they have made numerous physical upgrades to the vessels, including improving escape routes and fire-detection and suppression system, and have beefed up safety procedures.
— Noozhawk executive editor Tom Bolton can be reached at tbolton@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.
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