Boat Fire in Fort Lauderdale!
On a Tuesday afternoon in Early April, United States Coast Guard Station Ft. Lauderdale reported a vessel on fire on the Intracoastal Waterway just north of the Oakland Park Boulevard Bridge on VHF channel 16. It was a 28 foot Mastercraft twin inboard wakeboard boat that was fully engulfed in flames. Fortunately, the operator and his guests jumped overboard in the early stages of the incident and were uninjured!
The boat was adrift close to the seawall in a residential area on the West side of the Intracoastal. Fort Lauderdale Fire Rescue crews were dispatched to the scene to battle the blaze from land. They positioned themselves in the backyard of a home and managed to get the fire under control relatively quickly. As the fire rescue crew applied water to extinguish the flames, the casualty quickly began to sink and settled to the bottom upside down with only a small portion of her bow still afloat. During this process, 2 vessels and one land unit from TowBoatU.S. Ft. Lauderdale had arrived on scene to assist with the operation. Fire rescue cleared the scene and the salvage crew immediately went to work. A salvage diver entered the water to assess the condition of the vessel and determine if she had solid attachment points still intact. Fortunately the bow eye and both stern eyes were still solid despite the fact that the boat was nearly burned to the rub rail as evidenced in the photo above. The crew ran a towing hawser through the bow eye, along the beam of the boat and secured it to a stern eye in preparation for the “Pitch Pole” operation. Once the diver was clear, strain was taken up on the hawser from one of TowBoatU.S. Ft. Lauderdale's twin diesel tugs while a rigid hull inflatable boat with a captain and diver on board prepared several 8,000 gallon per hour electric pumps for deployment. This photo sequence link almost puts you in the seat of the captain aboard the RHIB! As you can see, the bow of the boat was lifted straight over the stern and the RHIB came alongside as soon as the casualty was in tow. The salvage diver placed pumps on board and dewatered the boat while making their way to the boat ramp.
The vessel was loaded aboard one of TowBoatU.S. Ft. Lauderdale's triple axle trailers and transported to their secure 10,000 square foot warehouse for storage. Surveyors and investigators inspected the boat in the days following the incident and the boat was stored at the facility until the insurance adjuster determined next steps for the Constructive Total Loss. TowBoatU.S. Ft. Lauderdale is available for salvage services like these around the clock; 365 days a year!
