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SANTA BARBARA, Calif. (AP) – A broken-hearted mother announced Tuesday on her Facebook page that her three daughters, their father and wife were among those presumed dead after the fire that devastated a family.
diving boat
out of Southern California during the holiday weekend.
Susana Rosas of Stockton, California, thanked people for their prayers and support.
The family of five, celebrating her birthday with an activity she appreciated, was one of 34 people believed to have died in the fire. All slept under the bridge when the fire broke out early Monday. Among the other victims were students from a North California charter school serving grades 7 to 12, a high school science teacher and his daughter, an Arizona couple, and a marine biologist who owned the dive company and directed the tour.
Five crew members were rescued and the bodies of 20 victims were found until now. Many need to be identified by DNA analysis, and officials are taking samples from family members.
Rosas announced that her three daughters – Evan, Nicole and Angela Quitasol – were participating in the Conception with their father Michael Quitasol and his mother-in-law Fernisa Sison.
Evan Quitasol was a nurse at St. Joseph's Medical Center in Stockton, where her father and Sison had worked after attending a nursing school at San Joaquin Delta College.
According to school spokesperson, Alex Breitler, Sison also taught full time full-time nursing students in 2005 and 2006, and then as an assistant instructor.
"Everyone is devastated – it's a totally unexpected thing that has happened," said Dominic Selga, Sison's ex-husband. "What caused the fire, that is the big question, is what we all want to know."
Selga said that his ex-wife's family had been on the boat "five or six" times and that she had been diving for a decade. According to Selga, both families spent Mother's Day and Father's Day together and called the Quitasols "great people".
Rosas' husband, Chris, told the Los Angeles Times that Nicole Quitasol was working as a bartender in Coronado, near San Diego, and that her sister, Angela, was a science teacher at a middle school in Stockton.
The sisters were on the trip to celebrate their father's birthday, said Chris Rosas. He described them as "the kindest and most loving people I have ever met – and I do not say that simply because they are family members".
Scott Chan, professor of physics at the American High School in Fremont, was also on board with his daughter, said Brian Killgore, spokesman for the Fremont Unified School District.
The district said in a statement that Chan had taught the last three years at the faculty of physics at school and had been well liked.
"His students knew him as an innovative and inspiring teacher, who developed a passion for physics among his students," the district said in a statement. "His loss is a tragedy for our school district."
On his LinkedIn page, Chan said that his teaching was fueled by "his passion and his great real-world experience in research labs, as well as in the electronics, computer and information industries. the high performance automobile ".
Under the bridge were also students from Pacific Collegiate School in Santa Cruz. The principal of the school, Maria C. Reitano, refused Tuesday to say how many students had participated in the trip, which was not sponsored by the school.
KNXV-TV, a subsidiary of ABC based in Phoenix, announced that an Arizona couple, Patricia Beitzinger and Neal Baltz, were also in the game.
"They went to heaven to do something that they loved together," said Neal's father, John Baltz, at the station.
Brett Harmeling, of Houston, said her sister, 41-year-old Kristy Finstad, was conducting the dive off the island of Santa Cruz, in the Channel Islands, California.
Harmeling thanked everyone in a post on her Facebook page for "their unconditional love and support in this incredibly tragic time".
Finstad was co-owner of Worldwide Diving Adventures based in Santa Cruz, about 400 km north of the island of Santa Cruz.
Finstad knew the area well after hundreds of dives in the Channel Islands, where she swam for the first time with her father as a toddler. She first dived with a tank off Mexico at age 9, according to her company's website.
Harmeling described his Los Angeles Times sister as extremely voluntary and adventurous.
"If she had a one percent chance that she would succeed, she would have done it," said Harmeling, 31.
Their mother founded the diving company in the 1970s.
Finstad studied damsel and corals in the Tahiti Islands, dipped for the black pearl in the Tuamotus Islands in French Polynesia, and counted salmonids for the city of Santa Cruz, where she lived. She has also done research for the Australian Institute of Ocean Sciences and written a restoration guide for the California Coastal Commission.
"My mission is to inspire the appreciation of our underwater world," she wrote on her company's website.
She and her husband had just returned from the South Pacific. It was part of their 10-year plan that started on the back of a towel in 2006.
They left the Channel Islands in 2015 and planned to return in 2018. Before leaving, Finstad wrote: "Our new boss is King Neptune: when he dives we sink, when there is surf we paddle; when there is rain, in terms of chronology, the best we can do is show the right direction. "
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Har has contributed San Francisco and Watson from San Diego.
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