District of North Vancouver Fire and Rescue Services members say they may never know what caused a boat to go up in flames in Deep Cove on Monday.
Crews were called to the marina just after 3:30 p.m. when witnesses saw a plume of black smoke billowing skyward. When they arrived they found a 13-foot fibreglass hull pleasure craft well past the point of being saved. Firefighters doused the flames with their truck’s water supply and fire extinguishers, according to assistant fire chief Brian Hutchinson. There were no injuries; however, there was some charring of the dock and another boat tied up nearby.
The Canadian Coast Guard came in to deploy small booms around the dock as chemicals from the burning boat accumulated in the water. They secured the burned vessel to the dock to prevent it from sinking.
“It will not be seaworthy ever again,” Hutchinson said. “Obviously with this type of product, once you get fire propagation occurring, it tends to burn quite rapidly. The fact that we were able to prevent any exposure damage to the other boats or the dock was quite impressive.”
Because the boat went up so quickly, nobody at the marina could speculate as to the cause. Fire investigators were on scene late Monday afternoon.
“There’s not a whole lot left for them to sift through to try and determine the fire cause but it is still under investigation at this time,” Hutchinson said.
Not good...#fire #Deepcove looks like at the marina and tons of trucks pic.twitter.com/x5BWKdzAL2
— Patricia Houlihan (@RealEVancouver) September 18, 2017
