Charges: Profits Overrode Safety On Fish Boat -- Firm, Ex-Officers Indicted In Loss Of Ship, 9 Men

The indictments of the nation's largest fishing company and 14 of its former or current employees are an unprecedented shot across the bow of an industry whose accident death rate is seven times higher than the national average.

Arctic Alaska Seafoods Inc. and the 14 individuals were indicted by a federal grand jury in Seattle yesterday following a three-year investigation inspired by the 1990 sinking of the fish processor Aleutian Enterprise. Nine crew members died in that sinking.

The company and the individuals - all but one of them no longer with Arctic Alaska - are accused in the 70-page indictment of sending several unsafe vessels to sea as recently as 1992, lying about crew qualifications, filing false documents and covering up safety violations.

"All in all, I think the industry is being reined in, finally," said retired Coast Guard Capt. Rene Roussel, who headed the agency's investigation of the Aleutian Enterprise sinking.

Among those charged were Francis Miller, 62, and Terry Baker, 48, two Seattle men who pioneered the American factory-trawler industry in the North Pacific. They formed Arctic Alaska in the early 1980s; it was sold to Tyson Foods in 1992.

Miller's attorney, David Bukey, said his client continues to feel pain because of the accident, "but it was an accident, not a crime."

Baker's attorney, Dan Dubitzky, said, "Terry is glad that the time has finally arrived that he has a chance to show how baseless these charges are."

Other defendants were bitter, even while expressing remorse for the lost crew.

"I think it's a crock," said Jeffrey A. Brooks, 31, a former company official who served variously as director of safety, operations and personnel. "I think the government is just fishing . . . I think they are trying to cover their butts from all the money they've spent on this case. I know I'm innocent of everything."

"We didn't kill anybody," he added. "It was an act of God. Look at all the accidents up there. It's a rough industry."

Also named in the charges were Daniel Roberts, 52, one of the company's founders; Joachim W. "John" Schmiedtke, 63, a German national who ran fishing operations, Mark R. Siemons, 32, of Renton, the former Aleutian Enterprise skipper; and Ronald R. Jensen, 56, a prominent Bainbridge Island executive who joined Arctic Alaska four months after the Aleutian Enterprise sank.

Other former officials named were executive vice president J. Brian Kelly, 48; fishing-operations vice president James D. Hubbard, 50; human-resources director Robert A. Nelson; personnel director Steven T. Tanoue, 49; a captain, Jay Clifford, 53; company port engineer Peter Njardvik, 63; and maintenance-and-operations vice president Frederick Karl Peterson.

The 44 counts, spread among various defendants, would be punishable by more than 100 years in prison, but such stiff penalties are unlikely. None of the accused has been arrested. They are scheduled to be arraigned before U.S. District Judge Carolyn Dimmick on May 26.

The victims' families were pleased.

"I could cry right now," said Mary Frances Blackstone, whose son, John Dieterich, died on the ship. "I don't get my son back this way but I also don't think (company officials) should get off scot-free and go waltzing off with the severance pay they got."

The most surprising aspects of the case are the number of charges that range beyond the events surrounding the sinking of the Aleutian Enterprise on March 22, 1990.

The indictment accuses the company and various officials of conspiring on several ships to increase profits by cutting back on safety measures, forcing crew members to work long and unsafe hours and failing to properly train people or inspect the ships.

It accuses the company and its officials of sending several other ships to sea in "an unseaworthy state," endangering crew members as recently as two years after the Aleutian Enterprise accident.

That is apparently why Jensen, who joined the company after the accident, was included in the indictment. He has since left the firm. Seimons is the only one charged who remains with Arctic Alaska.

"We expect the jury will throw this out faster than a Randy Johnson fastball because there is no merit to (the case)," said attorney Irwin Schwartz, who represents Siemons.

Tyson Foods, the $4 billion Arkansas chicken company that now owns Arctic Alaska, was not implicated in the indictment because all the alleged violations occurred before its purchase of Arctic Alaska.

Also mentioned in the indictment, but not implicated, is former U.S. Rep. John Miller, a Seattle Republican who helped Arctic Alaska avoid certain safety requirements on one of its ships before the Aleutian Enterprise accident. Miller, who could not be reached for comment, is likely to be a witness at trial.

In other allegations, the indictment says the company falsely claimed sea-time experience for crew members in an attempt to get them qualified for higher Coast Guard licenses. One man was in a hospital at the time the company said he was sailing; another was on vacation and another had served as a cook at a time the company claimed he was a deck officer, the charges say. Two dozen sailors were named in the indictment for getting false "sea time," but most were not indicted.

The court document also says Arctic Alaska employed "paper masters" and "paper mates," officers who have proper Coast Guard papers and are said to be in charge of the ship but who in practice are not running the vessel.

The company was also accused of dumping plastics, fish by-products and other prohibited substances into the sea. Siemons is accused of directing crew members from the Aleutian Enterprise to change their written statements about drug use on the vessel following the accident. And Schmiedtke is accused of refusing officials from the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration access to company vessels.

The indictment says the company lulled the public into a false sense of security by "periodically issuing press releases and making other public statements professing and promising to run vessels in accordance with good, accepted and safe marine practices, while members of the conspiracy, in fact, caused vessels to be sent to sea in a state that was likely to endanger the lives of the individuals on board."

At the centerpiece of the case, though, is the Aleutian Enterprise sinking, a case that holds out the possibility of the stiffest criminal penalties. The prosecutor invoked a little-used 19th-century law that holds a ship operator or captain liable if his misconduct, negligence or inattention to duty causes the death of a crew member. The maximum penalty is 10 years in prison.

Even before yesterday's indictment, the accident had had an impact on the fishing industry. Before the accident, the fishing industry resisted even moderate safety rules. For its part, Arctic Alaska strenuously fought lukewarm efforts by the U.S. Coast Guard to require the company to put loadlines on its fish-processing ships.

The loadline is a mark on the side of a ship indicating how deep in the water the vessel can be loaded, and the process of getting one includes ensuring that the vessel is stable and that there are no holes between the waterline and the main deck that cannot be sealed shut.

In relatively calm waters on the day of the accident, the Aleutian Enterprise crew pulled a final load of fish aboard before returning to port. The overloaded net split open, spilling fish onto the deck. The fish caused the vessel to list, and seawater sloshing around on a lower deck caused it to heel over farther.

Huge volumes of water gushed into at least one uncovered hole near the waterline that was used to dump out fish waste, according to separate investigations by the U.S. Coast Guard and the National Transportation Safety Board. Within minutes, the swamping ship rolled over and sank.

Twenty-two crew members survived, but nine disappeared. Crew members lacked basic training; they could not find their insulated survival suits and many of them didn't know how to put them on. Cardboard stacked in the hallway blocked their exit, and an alarm system did not work properly, the reports say.

Killed were engineer John Dieterich, first mate Nello Marciel, fisheries observer Robert W. McCord, factory foreman Matthew J. Schneider, cook Joseph Alaimo and processors Javier Martin Castro Valenzuela, Robert W. Davis Jr., Jeffrey A. Houston and David J. Jefferies.

In the wake of the accident, the Coast Guard took the unusual step of conducting a full-fledged investigation, as did the NTSB. The resulting reports blamed the Coast Guard for ignoring fishing-boat safety and the industry itself for a disregard for the dangers of the Northern Hemisphere's most violent waters.

A law Congress passed in 1988, co-sponsored by John Miller, required new safety equipment and better training, but the Coast Guard had failed to write the regulations necessary to enforce it.

The Aleutian Enterprise was the final straw, said Al Dujenski, a former Coast Guard officer now studying fishing-boat safety for a local insurance company. The Coast Guard issued a series of rules that required new safety equipment, training and drills on board ships.

Since then, thousands of fishermen have taken safety courses and Arctic Alaska has hired new safety officials. Many fish processors, including those run by Arctic Alaska, conduct regular drills, said Sue Jorgensen, a Coast Guard fishing-vessel safety coordinator in Alaska.

The changes are apparently having an impact.

An industry that had been losing nearly 40 people a year in Alaskan waters lost 18 last year. In February, 10 boats were lost and 49 people went into the water, but only one died. The others saved themselves because they put on their survival suits properly, Jorgensen said.

In years past, she noted, most fishing vessels had no survival suits. Now, with new training, fishermen no longer have such a fatalistic attitude, she said.

And, says Dujenski, many fishing-boat skippers feel empowered to say no when the company demands unsafe operations for the sake of profit.

Still, Dujenski and others acknowledge that more could be done. The Coast Guard does not license or inspect the more than 23,000 fishing boats working U.S. waters. Proposals for licensing and a mandatory inspection program have been rejected, in part because the Coast Guard does not have the resources to handle such a huge workload.

Seattle Times staff reporter Joe Haberstroh contributed to this report.