More victims identified from dive boat fire that claimed 34

The dive boat Concepcion was 20 yards from shore when it caught fire on Labor Day morning.

ASAM NEWS contributed to this report

Authorities continue to investigate the fire that sunk a diving boat, the Concepcion, and killed 34 passengers on Labor Day.

Thirty-three of dead have been recovered.

A South Asian couple from Connecticut has been identified in the fatal boat fire in Southern California, reports the Stamford Advocate.

Kaustubh Nirmal and Sanjeeri Deopujari have been married since 2016. Nirmal worked as a business analyst at Merrill Lynch and Deopujari had a dental practice in Norwalk.

Kaustubh Nirmal and Sanjeeri Deopujari

According to the American Bazaar, authorities used DNA mapping to identify the two. In all, 32 other people died in the fire. All were below deck sleeping at the time the fire broke out and likely died from smoke inhalation. 

Only five crew members on the top deck when the fire broke out survived. The crew members told authorities that they tried to rescue the passengers but the heat was too intense before ababndoning the boat. The cause of the fire is under investigation.

“He found a soulmate in Sanjeeri,” Nirmal’s cousin Rajul Sharma said to the LA Times. “Their love for each other was apparent even without them speaking about it.” “God took them away from us untimely and unfairly, but even he didn’t have the heart to separate them in death,” he said.

Other victims recently identified:

Adrian Dahood-Fritz was a senior environmental scientist with the state's Ocean Protection Council. Her husband, Andrew Fritz, was a professional photographer. The couple moved to California earlier this year from Taylor, TX.

Adrian Dahoud-Fritz

Dahood-Fritz worked for the Ocean Protection Council under the California Natural Resource Agency as a senior environmental scientist. She worked to manage California’s network of marine protected areas.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement Thursday. "She embodied marine conservation and was a highly accomplished and respected scientific researcher. Adrian's passion and energy will be greatly missed," Newsom wrote.

Wei Tan, 26, a recent graduate school alumna of UC Berkeley who studied industrial engineering was identified as a victim by her sister.“It hurts, it will always hurt, but we will move on,” Cheerin Tan wrote on Facebook.

Other passengers who perished in the boat were identified earlier. They include five members of a Filipino American family from Stockton, CA. as well as a Chinese American father and daughter, American High School physics teacher Scott Chan and Kendra, a marine biologist.

In a touching Facebook post, Susana Solano Rosas wrote a heartbreaking Facebook post, about her three daughters and ex-husband Michael Quitasol, whom she lost in the boat fire. She wrote: 

“I want to thank you all for your phone calls, texts, kind words, donations. The setting up of fundraiser. I am overwhelmed and humbled by all the support,” Rosas wrote. “It gives me great comfort to know my daughters, their dad and his wife were able to touch so many lives.”

“It is very difficult to know what to say to parents that have lost their children. Or to someone like Christina that lost her sisters, father and stepmom,” she continued, referencing her other daughter, Christina Quitasol, whom she shared with Michael.

“I can only say for me and my hubby, we don’t mind the texts, the phone calls the FB messages. I read them all. They bring great comfort to me,” she reassured. “If you do call me or my hubby, know we may cry or sob. It does not mean you have upset us. It is because you have touch[ed] our heart with your love for another human being.”

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Five members of family; father and daughter among the 34 who perish in boat fire off of California coast

COURTESY

From left: Nicole, Christina, Michael, Evanmichel, and Angela Quitasol. Christina was not on the fatal family outing. Also perishing was Michael Quitasol's wife, Fernisa Sison.

What was supposed to be a birthday celebration turned deadly for a Filipino American family from Stockton; and a bonding trip for a father and daughter ended in their deaths.
The passengers were sleeping at 3 a.m. Monday when the vessel caught fire. They were on a 75-foot Concepcion offering a luxurious three-day excursion that was to include diving amid the kelp forests, nature lectures and gourmet meals.

All toll, 34 people perished as their ship caught fire off the Southern California just off of Santa Catalina Island on Labor Day.  

Among the victims were five members of the Quitasol family from Stockton, CA. Three sisters — Angela Rose, Nicole and Evanmichel Quitasol — set out Saturday with their father, Michael Quitasol, and stepmother, Fernisa Sison. They were celebrating Michael’s birthday.

A Kaiser Permanente spokeswoman confirmed that Michael Quitasol worked as a registered nurse at the Kaiser hospitals in Modesto and Manteca, his wife Fernisa Sison worked as a registered nurse at Kaiser medical offices in Stockton, and Quitasol’s daughter Evan Solano Quitasol is a nurse at St. Joseph's Hospital in Stockton.

Angela Rose, with her hair dyed blue, was the "cool teacher" at Sierra Middle School. She skated with the roller derby team the Port City Roller Girls, where she was known as “Hermoine Danger.”

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Kendra Chan and her father Scott shared a passion for diving.

Also perishing was Scott Chan, a physics teacher at American High School in Fremont, where hee taught the last two years. Before that, he was an Silicon Vallley engineer for 20 years. He  died along with his daughter Kendra, who had just turned 26 years old. She was a wildlife biologist with U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Ventura. The two loved diving, said Scott Chan's partner 

Few details have emerged about what happened before the breathless captain made a mayday call at 3:15 a.m. Five crew members, including the captain, managed to escape the Conception.

Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown said fire above the deck blocked the one stairway and an emergency exit hatch where 33 passengers and one crew member were sleeping in bunks. It’s not known if any alarm sounded or what the people below deck may have done to try to escape.

As of Thursday morning, 33 bodies have been recovered from the Concepcion which lies at the bottom of ocean about 65 feet deep.

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Members of the Quitasol family will hold a fundraiser Friday and Saturday at the Mexican Heritage Center, 111 S. Sutter St., Stockton. The fundraiser will take place from 3-6 p.m. Friday and 10 a.m.-1 p.m. Saturday. Drinks and appetizers will be served. Checks should be made payable to Susan Solana Rosas, the mother of Evanmichel Quitasol, Nicole Quitasol and Angela Rose Quitasol, who died in the diving-boat fire off the Southern California coast early Monday morning.

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