Death toll of Boat fire off Southern California raises to 25 (UPDATE)
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Update: Divers have found a total of 25 bodies on Monday after a pre-dawn fire sank a scuba diving vessel off a Southern California island, leaving nine people unaccounted for as the search continued, media reported.
Representatives for the Coast Guard’s division in Los Angeles and the Santa Barbara Sheriff’s Office could not immediately be reached to confirm the report from the Associated Press, which cited the U.S. Coast Guard.
Earlier: A middle-of-the-night fire swept a boat carrying recreational scuba divers anchored near an island off the Southern California coast early Monday, leaving at least eight dead and little hope any of 26 others missing would be found alive.
Five of six crew members on the Conception escaped by jumping into an inflatable boat they steered to a nearby vessel.
Rescuers recovered four bodies just off Santa Cruz Island and spotted four others on the ocean floor near where the boat sank only about 18 meters from shore. They planned to continue searching for survivors, but Coast Guard Capt. Monica Rochester cautioned it was unlikely anyone else would be found alive.
“We will search all the way through the night into the morning, but I think we should all be prepared to move into the worst outcome,” she told an afternoon news conference.
At a press conference, Sheriff Bill Brown said 39 people were on board the vessel when fire broke out.
The cause of the blaze is so far unknown.
Four bodies have been recovered so far – two male and two female adults – and four more have been spotted on the sea floor, he said.
“The boat remains unstable and we are not sure when we will be able to recover those bodies [on the sea bed] and any more that may be in the vessel,” he said.
