LOS ANGELES _ The lead investigator probing the Conception boat fire disaster expressed concerns about the ability of passengers to escape in an emergency after she and her team toured a similar vessel in Santa Barbara Harbor on Wednesday.
National Transportation and Safety Board member Jennifer Homendy told The Times she was "taken aback" by the size of the emergency hatch when she toured the Vision.
Authorities say 34 died early Monday when a fire swept through the Conception. The victims were sleeping below deck and were unable to get out. Five crew members were on deck when the fire broke out and were able to escape.
Investigators are trying to determine what caused the fire and why people were not able to get out.
Homendy said she and the investigators turned the lights off to see what it would have been like for the passengers trapped on the Conception.
With the lights off, the emergency lighting was on the other side of the room, she said.
Getting to the emergency hatch was difficult, she said, adding they couldn't find the light switches in the dark.
"You have to climb up a ladder and across the top bunk and then push a wooden door up," she said. "It was a tight space. We couldn't turn the light on."
Though slightly larger than the Conception, the Vision has a similar layout. Single and double bunks are stacked two and three high in the boat's sleeping quarters below deck. A wooden staircase leads from the sleeping area up to the galley. Authorities say the exit on the Conception _ along with an escape hatch that opens up near the dive deck on the boat _ was blocked by fire.
Both boats are owned by Truth Aquatics, which operated charter diving excursions around the Channel Islands. The U.S. Coast Guard has said the Conception had passed all recent inspections.
The NTSB's tour of the Vision was designed to get a sense of the conditions on the Conception.
"I wanted to see where they kept the fire extinguisher, the life jackets and what it was like in the bunk room," Homendy said.
After descending a set of stairs into the bunkroom, one fire extinguisher at the bottom was blocked by a trash can, which would not be up to Coast Guard standards, she said. At the other end, there's a hatch on the ceiling, she said.
Survival-factor specialists on the NTSB team will ultimately assess the path to the emergency hatch, she stressed.
But from her perspective, it posed problems, especially for larger people, she said.
"It was very difficult," Homendy said about trying to exit the escape hatch. "I was taken back by that."
Aaron Roland, who has dived on the Truth Aquatics fleet numerous times, told The Times earlier this week that the Conception was a wonderful vessel but escaping up the narrow staircase from below decks in a fire would be a nightmare.
Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown said Tuesday that the victims were trapped below deck with no way of getting to safety.
"There was a stairwell to get down the main entryway up and down, and there was an escape hatch, and it would appear as though both of those were blocked by fire," he said.
