- A 75-foot-long diving boat caught on fire off Santa Cruz Island, Southern California, early Monday morning.
- Out of the 39 people on board the ship, only five people have been found alive. The remaining 34 are presumed dead.
- The US Coast Guard called off its search and rescue operation on Tuesday morning, saying that it has found no indications of more survivors.
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Authorities have suspended their search for victims of the Santa Cruz boat fire, saying that they have no reason to hope they will find more survivors.
US Coast Guard Capt. Monica Rochester told reporters on Tuesday that the search ended at 9:40 a.m. local time that day because rescuers had seen no additional signs of distress or debris in the 24 hours after the fire.
Such signs might have indicated more survivors – and their absence suggested that there were none.
“It is never an easy decision to suspend search efforts,” Rochester said, adding that the Coast Guard and other agencies had covered an area of 160 miles in their search over the course of about 24 hours.
The search and rescue operation is now a recovery mission.
Of the 39 people on board the 75-foot-long diving boat, named Conception, only five - four crew members and a captain - were found alive, CNN reported. The 34 either confirmed or presumed to have died is made up of 33 passengers and one other crew member.
A total of 20 bodies have been recovered, and are now being sent to a coroner for identification, Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown told reporters.
Authorities have so far identified them as 11 female and nine male bodies, Brown said, but offered no further information.
Divers saw four to six other bodies among the wreckage, but were unable to retrieve them because the boat was unstable, Brown said.
Conception went up in flames off the coast of Southern California in the early hours of Monday morning.
The vessel had been on a three-day excursion over Labor Day weekend, and is presumed to have caught on fire near Santa Cruz Island.
The cause of the fire is still being investigated by authorities. Rochester noted, however, that the boat had passed its most recent inspection for fire-safety equipment, according to The Wall Street Journal.
One challenge facing investigators could be the loss of vital evidence, which may have burned in the fire or sunk to the bottom of the ocean, The Associated Press reported Wednesday, citing marine investigators.
