LOS ANGELES (CN) — A crew member who survived the fire that killed 34 people on a dive boat off the coast of California testified Friday that it was impossible for them to fight the flames that destroyed the vessel.
Milton French, the first deckhand on the fatal Labor Day diving trip in 2019, told a federal jury in downtown Los Angeles that when he was woken up by other crew members in the middle of the night, the flames from the boat's main deck were already 15 feet high and coming over the railing of the upper the deck where most of the crew were sleeping.
French was called by the prosecution at the seaman's manslaughter trial of Jerry Boylan, the captain of the Conception that was on a three-day diving trip with 33 passengers and six crew members on board. All the passengers and one crew member who was sleeping below with the passengers perished.
French was in a romantic relationship with Allie Kurz, the second deckhand who was on her second overnight trip on the boat and who was assigned to sleep with the passengers below. French said until a few weeks before the fatal trip, he had been the crew members who slept below deck to assist the passengers in case they needed anything during the night.
"I don't remember hearing any firefighting instructions," French said as he recounted in sometimes halting testimony the crew's ineffective attempts to reach the people trapped below. "It didn't happen — we didn't fight the fire."
Boylan, 70, is charged with misconduct or neglect by of a ship officer. Prosecutors with the U.S. attorney's office in LA accuse him of not having a required night watch on the boat and being the first to abandon ship — and telling the rest of the crew to do the same — instead of trying to stop the fire and save the people trapped below deck.
"Jerry Boylan was the captain, the person in charge of the safety of the passengers and the crew," Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew O'Brien told the jurors in his opening statement earlier this week. But "he was the first person to jump off the vessel."
French, who was 28 at the time of the tragedy, recounted before the jury how, after he was awakened and had seen that the stairs from the upper deck down to main deck were already blocked by the flames, he and the other crew members climbed down over the railings to get down and find a way the rescue the passengers while Boylan stayed in the wheelhouse to radio the Coast Guard for help.
He climbed down to the bow of the boat, French said, but the walkway to the back of the boat where the fire stations were located was already blocked by the flames shooting out of the windows of the salon. French and the boat's second captain then tried to open the central window of galley to access the salon, where the stairs to the below-deck bunk room was located as well as the escape hatch from below.
Remembering that there was a fire ax in the wheelhouse with which they could break the galley's windows, French tried to get attention of Boylan who he could see in the wheelhouse as it was filling up with smoke. However, before he was able to get Boylan's attention, the captain had jumped from the wheelhouse over the crew members scrambling around on the boat's bow and into the ocean.
"It really looked like he was on fire," French said. "We assumed he needed some help."
The second captain dove in the water to assist Boylan, French said. But the captain was unharmed and when he came up he told the three crew members, one of whom had broken his leg jumping from the upper deck, to get off the boat, according to the deckhand.
French next went into the water and swam to the stern of the Conception to see if he could enter the salon from there. However, when he climbed on board, he saw that the entrance to the salon as well as the two fire stations with hoses that could spray seawater on the fire were completely engulfed.
Eventually, the five surviving crew members used the Conception's skiff to reach a nearby anchored sport-fishing boat to radio the Coast Guard. French and the second captain then went back to the burning Conception in the skiff to look for any survivors in the water in the hope that some of the passengers might have gotten off the boat before the flames and smoke had blocked their way out of the bunk room.
Boylan is accused of failing to train and drill the crew in the use of the Conception's fire fighting equipment, as well as failing to direct them to fight fire during the fatal night, such as using the fire extinguishers or the fire axe, or trying to rescue the passengers..
"I remember seeing Jerry on the back deck," after he had jumped into the ocean, French said. "I don't remember Jerry doing anything."
Citing a confidential report by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the LA Times reported in September that the fire started in a large plastic trash can on the boat's main deck, underneath the stairs to the upper deck and just outside the doors to the salon.
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