Boat fire

[Monterey10]

One of the live aboards moored out front of Capitola Pier burned last night. The woman and dog got off. The 50'er burned and sank before Coast Guard Monterey got over with their fire boat. The locals are complaining today about oil and gas in the marina this morning.

 

[yzer]

Aren't digital cameras great? It's an unfortunate circumstance and I'm glad everyone got out OK, but what a shot!

 

[Flutterby]

Wow! poor lady lost her home and will now be fined for pollution! I'm glad she and her dog are safe.

 

[deltabighat]

I saw the whole thing from a vacation house we rent on the hill. The woman lost everything except what she was wearing. There is a lot of speculation around the harbor about what happened. The authorities are going to raise the boat up to see what caused the fire. The other good thing that happened.....my boat was moored about 100 years away and escaped any damage. The boat burned to the water line, then a fire boat out of Monterey came to the scene (took them over 50 minutes) put out the fire and then the boat sank. It shows up nicely on my fishfinder when I drive over it. I sure hope she was well insured. And yes, as of yesterday there is oil coming up from the bottom. You would think as big as Santa Cruz harbor is, that they would have a boat capable of putting water on a fire???

DBH

 

[abdiver]

quote:

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Originally posted by deltabighat

The authorities are going to raise the boat up to see what caused the fire.

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There are several reasons why it might be raised, such as it being a hazard or because of pollution. I seriously doubt that they would care much for doing an investigation or if there would even be any useable evidence after it burned that completely.

quote:

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You would think as big as Santa Cruz harbor is, that they would have a boat capable of putting water on a fire???

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They might have such a vessel. What they probably don't have is a full time crew to man the vessel. It takes some amount of time for the call to come in, then send the fire crew down to the harbor, then get the boat underway. If it was in a marina they might have had greater urgency. The fact is that on a typical recreational boat any fire can very quickly damage the boat beyond repair.

There are additional problems with fighting a boat fire. The basic problem is that you can't get to the base of the flames. The only thing that a fire boat could have done would be to pump the hull full of water and hasten its sinking.

Rod