Conception Fire Appears To Have Started in a Plastic Trash Can

The deadly fire that broke out four years ago aboard the Conception dive boat, killing 34 people, started in a plastic trash can on the main deck, a confidential report reviewed by The Los Angeles Times shows.

Investigators with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives built a full-scale mock-up of the middle deck of the 75-foot vessel in their quest to determine the fire's point of origin and cause. Burn tests concluded the blaze began in a rubbish container, and the testing showed that the boat's main salon was in flames within minutes. The report has not been publicly disclosed because of ongoing criminal and civil court proceedings involving the inferno.

The fire ignited before dawn on September 2, 2019, while the three-deck, wooden-hulled Conception was anchored off Santa Cruz Island, about 27 miles from Santa Barbara. Five crew members were asleep in the wheelhouse on the top deck and were jolted awake by shouts of "Fire! Fire!" shortly after 3 a.m. The boat's 33 passengers and another crew member were trapped below deck by the flames as they tried to escape, cellphone video from passengers' phones showed. Seeing the flames racing toward them, the crew jumped overboard, and after an effort to reboard the Conception, used a dinghy to paddle to a neighboring boat for help. Prosecutors say the captain, Jerry Boylan, did not use a roving watch commander while those aboard were sleeping.

In initial investigations, officials focused on charging areas where divers plugged in lithium-ion batteries for cameras, phones, and computers. One of the surviving crew members thought the phone-charging station might have sparked the fire.

Ultimately, ATF investigators focused on a 23-gallon Rubbermaid Slim Jim garbage bin that sat beneath the stairs of the main deck.

Officials noted how one crew member heard crackling sounds from below and spotted the fire at the bottom of the stairs. The inferno blocked the escape route of those bedded down on the bottom deck.

Multiple re-creations of the fire by ATF investigators showed a wall of flames blocking all escape routes on the Conception within minutes of ignition. When a breeze was added to simulate possible winds blowing on Platte's Harbor the night the fire erupted, the blaze spread even quicker.

Investigators still have not learned what ignited, and the ATF said the cause remains "undetermined as investigators cannot rule out discarded smoking material, the open flame ignition of combustible materials such as paper towels located with the garbage container, or an event unknown to investigators."

The 197-page report noted that the Captain, Jerry Boylan, smoked cigarettes but said he threw them overboard. Two crew members also tested positive for marijuana but denied smoking onboard. A birthday celebration with candles took place the day before the fire, but survivors said the candles were all extinguished.

Crew member Mickey Kohls told investigators he emptied four smaller trash bins into the 23-gallon receptacle about 2:35 a.m. the night of the fire. He was awakened about 3:12 a.m. by a popping sound and saw a glow from the middle deck.

The NTSB reported in 2020 that there were polyethylene trash cans made by Rubbermaid throughout the Conception that were "highly combustible." At the time, such bins were forbidden in all vessels' sleeping areas and banned from all compartments on newer boats.

The ATF said it found no evidence to support that the fire started where a tangled web of lithium-ion batteries had been charging, although it noted that such batteries can ignite when they malfunction.

This is an edited article written by Richard Winton that appeared in the Los Angeles Times on September 2, 2023.