Anaheim Bay Accident Left 5 Dead : Survivors of Boat Crash Rebuild Lives

It was about 2:30 a.m. Oct. 28 when the nine revelers pulled away from the dock at the Red Onion restaurant in Huntington Harbour. To driver Virl Earles, 29, and his eight passengers aboard a 20-foot speedboat, a quick trip out of Anaheim Bay to the Queen Mary and a blast of fresh ocean air seemed to be the perfect way to end a pre-Halloween night of drinking and dancing.

They passed the ocean liner and a lit-up oil rig, then turned back toward Huntington Harbour.

No one saw the three-foot-high steel and concrete mooring buoy. Within seconds, five people in their early to mid-20s--some close friends, some new acquaintances--would die, and the lives of the other four would be changed forever.

‘Must Have Been Out’

“I think I must have been out for a few seconds, but not much more than that. I could see the surface of the water about as far away as the ceiling here,” Earles said, pointing from a living room chair in his Seal Beach home, only about a mile from the crash site. “The boat was folded over on my left leg, and my foot was broken. So I just put my other foot up against the dash and pushed until I finally got loose.”

Carol Kemble, 25, does not remember the crash. She did not hear or feel the impact against the seven-ton U.S. Navy buoy, she said, although she does remember the numbing sensation she felt as she was hurled into the frigid waters.

For more than two hours, she and another passenger, Ernest Chavez, 25, perched on the buoy and held Earles out of the water as he lapsed in and out of consciousness. Stephen Brennan, 24, the fourth survivor, swam ashore, despite a shattered pelvis and internal bleeding, to get help.

It was one of the worst private boating accidents on record in Southern California. Seal Beach residents John Bakos, 22; Ronald Myers, 22; Anthony Sutton, 27; Laguna Beach resident Kathy Weaver, 24; and Downey resident Patricia Hulings, 20, died.

In the days immediately following the crash, there was a flurry of activity.

Sheriff’s Department investigators handed the case to the district attorney’s office to determine whether Earles, whose blood alcohol level measured .11 after the crash, should be prosecuted.

The National Transportation Safety Board began its own investigation, sending a marine safety specialist and an architect to survey the scene and interview the survivors. That report probably will not be released until June at the earliest, board architect Ralph Johnson said.

Navy officials also conducted an inspection, and lawyers showed up at the bedsides of survivors and the homes of the families of the dead.

Meanwhile, the four who survived were beginning a painful journey back to physical and psychological health.

So far, only Kemble has recovered enough to return to work. She and Chavez, who is still on a leave of absence from his job in Bakersfield, see physical therapists for orthopedic injuries.

Brennan will never be able to work as a roofer again, nor to do any job requiring heavy lifting. Doctors are still unsure when Earles, who underwent a colostomy and now wears a brace to stabilize his broken thigh bone, will recover enough to return to a normal routine. He faces more surgery on his leg and ruptured intestines.

Psychological Counseling

All except Earles have undergone psychological counseling. Kemble said she was plagued by nightmares for two weeks after the incident, but that the treatment has helped. “Not a minute goes by when I don’t think about Pat and Kathy, but the nightmares don’t come so often anymore,” she said.

Weaver, a controller at Mercy General Hospital in Santa Ana, had been a roommate and friend of Kemble since the two decided to head for California after graduation fromcollege in Beaumont, Tex., two years ago. Hulings worked with Kemble at a Laguna Beach advertising agency and planned to move in with her and Weaver in November.

Attorneys Retained

The survivors, as well as the families of those who died, have all retained attorneys.

Houston lawyer Neal Hirschfeld, who specializes in maritime law, filed separate $10-million negligence claims against the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Coast Guard, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the City of Seal Beach and the Orange County Board of Supervisors on behalf of the Bakos, Huling and Weaver families. He sent the same agencies $300,000 claims on behalf of Kemble and Chavez. Attorneys representing the other families have filed similar claims, with the total of all claims to date exceeding $200 million. So far, each has been rejected, paving the way for the first lawsuits in the case.

In addition, Hirschfeld sent suit-threatening letters to the Red Onion and Sundown Marine in Seal Beach, the firm that he alleges supplied the boat to Earles without life preservers. “If there had been life preservers on board, I would have worn one,” Kemble said. “And we found out later that two (of the five who died) drowned.”

Sheriff’s Lt. Bob Kemmis confirmed that no life preservers were found at the scene.

‘Very Touchy Thing’

Sundown owner Bob Long would not comment except to deny ownership of the boat. “It’s a very touchy thing,” he said. “It wasn’t our boat, although it did leave from here.”

Attorney James Jones, who is representing Brennan, said Earles’ younger brother Robert got the speedboat, from Sundown on loan while the firm repaired his own boat.

The speedboat had been traded in to Sundown by Robert Sharpe of Anaheim, who bought a new boat. Neither he nor Sundown had filed a change of registration before the accident, so attorneys are unsure who may be liable.

Jones said, however, that he will name both Sundown and Sharpe in his suit. “He’s definitely liable,” he said. “When no change of registration is filed, the old seller is held as responsible as the new owner,” he said. Sharpe could not be reached for comment.

Jones added that Brennan, who has no medical insurance, will attempt to have either Sharpe’s insurance or Sundown’s policy cover his hospital bills, which, he said, will total about $50,000.

‘Couldn’t Blame Him’

Jones said Earles also will be named in any of his lawsuits, although Brennan said he does not hold Earles personally responsible.

“I really couldn’t blame him,” he said. “I figure if there’d been adequate lighting or a reflector on the buoy, five people wouldn’t be dead today.”

Capt. John Kinnier, commanding officer at the Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station, said he thinks that lighting the buoys could make it more difficult for boaters to find the 400-foot wide channel. He explained that inexperienced boaters might choose to follow those lights instead of flashing lights on the weapons station wharf that mark the correct path.

Kinnier said that the buoy Earles struck was about 250 feet to the west of the channel. “So he was really off-course,” he said.

The situation for boaters in Huntington Harbour, Kinnier said, is safe. “The harbor is adequately provided with safe navigational aids and all the moorings and buoys conform to regulations,” he said.

Buoys Used Since 1964

The buoys have been in use since 1964 and have been close to their present locations since 1975, Kinnier said. Barges are moored to the buoys in the outer harbor to load large ships that cannot go into more shallow water. Kinnier said the buoys lessen the potential damage from an accident while loading ships because explosives are handled at various sites offshore, avoiding the “piling up of large amounts of ammunition on the pier.”

About 300 naval ships are serviced at Seal Beach each year and share the channel with private boats, which make an estimated 200,000 trips through the waterway annually, Navy spokesman John Frye said.

Dana Denton, Earles’ attorney, notes that the west jetty at the entrance has been unlit since 1983 and remains that way today. Kinnier said, however, that a lighted marker floating just outside the jetty provides the necessary guide.

Denton also cited a written suggestion by a Navy employee a year before the accident that urged better lighting to mark the correct channel and noted that boaters often follow the lights on the Pacific Coast Highway bridge instead of the flashing lights on the wharf. “Civilian craft entering the outer harbor area sometimes get the two confused and head directly toward the bridge lights, unaware that there is a beach between themand the entrance to Huntington Harbour,” the employee, whose name Denton withheld, said in the suggestion.

‘Technical Aspects’

According to the state law, it is a felony to cause a death while driving a boat under the influence of alcohol, but the law does not specify when a boat driver is legally drunk. “A boat case is very unusual for us,” Conley said. “None of the people involved had much boating experience, and you get into technical aspects that you don’t see in auto accidents.”

Earles, who returned home from Los Alamitos Hospital on Dec. 15, said he had “three or four” margaritas at the restaurant but that he was not drunk. He admits a speed of about 17 knots when he struck the buoy. The speed limit inside the bay is 6 knots.

He takes painkilling medication every four hours and must undergo more surgery and therapy before doctors will say whether he can return to his seasonal job as a crab fisherman in Alaska.

His attorney estimates that his medical bills will run from $50,000 to $100,000 and that lost earnings could total as much as $1 million, depending on the outcome of more surgery on his leg and ruptured intestines. Earles has no medical insurance; he is applying to the county Indigent Medical Services program for coverage of the costs. Denton said his client’s injuries and trauma should be worth “seven figures.”

The threat of a manslaughter charge is troubling, but Earles is confident he will be cleared. “Of course I wonder what will happen, but I don’t really think I’ve done anything wrong. I don’t see how I could have done anything wrong,” he said.

Denton said he will fight any criminal charges. “There’s that real possibility that he could be charged,” he said. “And I can tell you this: There will be no plea-bargaining--absolutely none.”