On the fifth anniversary of a diving boat fire off the Santa Barbara coast that claimed the lives of 34 people — more than half hailing from the Bay Area and Northern California — the head of the National Transportation Safety Board and families of victims criticized the U.S. Coast Guard for not instituting safety requirements they believe will prevent future maritime tragedies.
NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy appeared Monday with surviving relatives and first responders at the MV Conception memorial at Point Castillo on the Santa Barbara shoreline, where she said making safety management systems mandatory for all U.S. ferry operators has been a standing recommendation from her agency since 2010, when Congress gave the Coast Guard authority to implement it.
The on-board fire that destroyed the Conception on Sept. 2, 2019, she said, further reinforced the need.
“It’s 2024, and here we are, with no action. We know our recommendations save lives,” Homendy said. “I call on the Coast Guard to finish its work implementing solutions to prevent such a tragedy from occurring again.”
A safety management system encompasses elements including preventative maintenance, emergency procedures and a clear chain of command; it also mandates that crew be assigned to duties like roving patrols.
Homendy also said she sent a letter to Admiral Linda L. Fagan, commandant of the Coast Guard, and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to mandate safety management systems and end the “unacceptable inaction” that has occurred to this point.
“I strongly urge your full attention to this matter,” Homendry wrote. “The families affected by the Conception tragedy deserve no less.”
The Coast Guard did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.
Vicki Moore, a Los Altos resident whose husband Raymond Scott Chan and daughter Kendra Chan died in the fire, wrote in an op-ed piece published earlier this year in The Mercury News similarly pressing the Coast Guard to adopt the NTSB recommendation and mandate “a safety management system with clear procedures, checklists and corrective measures to ensure that vessel crews are complying with regulations, company requirements and best practices.
“We don’t want anyone to have to go through what we’ve been through,” Moore wrote. “Tragedies that occur due to safety negligence are not accidents. They are often predictable and preventable, and we all have a role to play to prevent such terrible losses.”
The Conception was anchored off Santa Cruz Island, 25 miles south of Santa Barbara, when it caught fire before dawn. Federal investigators found that the Conception’s captain, Jerry Boylan, did not post a night watch and did not train his crew in firefighting.
At a criminal trial last year, which ended with Boylan being found guilty of one federal count of misconduct or neglect of a ship officer, prosecutors said his failures allowed the fire to spread undetected across the 75-foot boat where 33 passengers and one crewmember perished.
Related Articles
California prosecutors seeking restitution for victims in 2019 Conception boat fire
40-foot boat catches fire in Bay waters off Redwood City
The survivors of the fire, for which no official cause has been declared, included Boylan and four crewmembers who were above deck. Boylan was the first to jump ship and escape the fire, while the victims — all of whom were on the tail end of a three-day diving excursion — were trapped in a bunkroom, separated from the exits by intense fire.
Boylan was sentenced to four years in federal custody followed by three years of supervised release; he has denied culpability for his passengers’ deaths and is appealing his conviction. His attorneys have blamed the Conception’s owner, diving company Truth Aquatics Inc., for failing to train the crew and for that they called a loose safety culture that did not prioritize having roving watch duty at night.
Survivors of the Conception victims have filed wrongful death lawsuits against Truth Aquatics and the Coast Guard; the former for ignoring safety requirements, and the latter for lax enforcement including failing to identify visibly unsafe modifications such as additional power outlets that overloaded the ship’s electrical system.
“How many times do we have to call on the Coast Guard to act? How many more people need to get injured? How many more people need to die?” Homendy said Monday. “Families, friends have lost loved ones … They aren’t just numbers. These are people. Lives that will never be the same. This is the cost of no action.”
