On the five-year anniversary of the Conception dive boat fire that claimed the lives of 34 people, families of the victims and the chair of the National Transportation Safety Board called for more safety measures to be implemented and enforced. 

Vicki Moore, who lost her daughter, Kendra Moore Chan, and husband, Raymond Scott Chan, in the Sept. 2, 2019, fire, said she wants to make sure that no other families have to go through what they went through.

“It was absolutely not an accident; it was a disaster simply waiting to happen,” Moore said. “As we know, there is a reason for safety regulations and laws, and when you don’t have them, it’s a matter of time before lives are lost, and that is exactly what happened in the case of the Conception. These laws were ignored for decades.”

Jennifer Homendy, chair of the NTSB, spoke at the Conception memorial at the Santa Barbara Harbor breakwater about the need for mandatory Safety Management Systems, the lack of enforcement for existing safety standards, and the lives that were lost five years ago. 

“Today is a day, just like every other day since Sept. 2, 2019, that is marked with grief and tremendous, unimaginable pain,” Homendy said.

On that Labor Day, 33 passengers and one crew member died in the devastating boat fire that trapped them in the below-deck bunkroom. The Santa Barbara-based boat was anchored off Santa Cruz Island for a diving trip.

The captain, Jerry Nehl Boylan, 70, of Santa Barbara, and five other crew members who were on higher decks of the boat jumped overboard to escape the blaze.

Earlier this year, Boylan was sentenced to four years in prison for “seaman’s manslaughter.”

In the criminal case, prosecutors argued that Boylan failed his responsibilities by not having a night watch, failing to conduct fire drills and train the crew in firefighting, and failing to use firefighting equipment that was next to him in the wheelhouse to fight the fire or save trapped passengers.

In the first year after the disaster, the NTSB made several safety recommendations to the U.S. Coast Guard, including requiring interconnected smoke detectors and unobstructed pathways to allow people to escape in case of an emergency. However, Homendy said the Coast Guard hasn’t said how it is enforcing those recommendations. 

The biggest thing that the Coast Guard hasn’t done, which the NTSB has been recommending for more than 20 years, is mandating a Safety Management System, Homendy said Monday. 

According to Homendy, SMS deals with common sense marine safety, compliance to existing regulations and establishes rules for safe operations. 

“It delineates what crew members’ responsibilities and duties are, training that must take place, what drills must take place, roving patrols that must be on duty, especially at night,” Homendy said.

The NTSB first issued the recommendation after the 2003 Staten Island ferry crash that claimed the lives of 11 people and injured 70 others. According to Homendy, the Coast Guard hasn’t given the NTSB a reason as to why SMS hasn’t been implemented.

“How many times does the NTSB have to issue this recommendation again before the Coast Guard will take action?” Homendy asked. “How many deaths have to occur? How many injuries have to occur? How many families have to stand up here at a press conference, grieving for their loved ones, before action is taken?” 

Family members of victims echoed Homendy’s demands and remembered their loved ones. 

Moore said that she and other family members of the victims will be working with Congressman Salud Carbajal’s office to ask why it is taking so long for the Coast Guard to act on those recommendations.

Kathleen McIlvain, who lost her son, Charles McIlvain, spoke with her husband, Clark McIlvain, by her side about how the families of the victims turned their pain into advocacy.

“Our hope was that no other family would feel this pain,” McIlvain said. 

McIlvain said that while they were grateful for the regulations that had been passed since the fire, she urged the Coast Guard to make SMS mandatory immediately.

“If an SMS had been required, the crew would have been aware of the inherent risk, they would have properly trained and prepared to respond to all emergencies, including fire, and we may not be standing here today,” McIlvain said.

McIlvain blamed Boylan for not properly training the crew, and for being the first to abandon ship while the victims were still alive inside. 

“We can’t change the past, but we can continue to advocate for stronger maritime safety regulations in their honor and hopefully save future lives,” McIlvain said.

There have been some changes to safety requirements in response to the Conception disaster. 

In January 2021, Congress enacted the Small Passenger Vessel Safety Act of 2019, which directed the U.S. Coast Guard to ensure that vessels have no fewer than two ways of escape to different parts of the boat, mandated safety standards for handling devices with lithium-ion batteries, and monitoring devices to ensure the wakefulness of the required night watch person. 

In January 2023, President Joe Biden signed into law the Small Passenger Vessel Liability Fairness Act, which holds owners of boats responsible for damages caused to their passengers.