Boats on fire- Shelter Bay, La Conner

Up to 10 boats on fire.

Nwcn.com

Pau Hana said:

Up to 10 boats on fire.

Nwcn.com

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Now they say 20 on fire and likely to be total losses. Apparently started at a dock with 12 boats but then the boat that was on fire floated into some other boats at another dock.

Wow! This really sucks.

So Sad

La Conner is such a great place to enjoy. I have been several times and feel it really is a nice little gem. I hope all that have lost in this situation have insurance to cover the material loss. I know there wasn't anything mentioned about injuries but I would assume they would have mentioned if anyone was aboard when the boat(s) caught fire. Something like this it's fortunate that no one was injured.

We were driving into Mt. Vernon and saw all the smoke. My wife and I looked at each other and said oh crap, that has to be a marina. Huge amounts of bad black smoke. I called my buddy as he keeps his boat in La Connor but at a different marina thankfully. Hope no one was hurt.
~ Jeff

The report was that two people were stranded on the dock but they were able to quickly rescue them. There were no fire hydrants near so there were twelve trucks or so brought to the scene but from what I saw they had no chance. A couple of nearby residents did get their dinghy and pull four boats away from the fire.

This was their dock with the largest boats so thousands of gallons of diesel fuel potentially spilled as six boats are apparently sunk.

I just talked to a friend (and client) who lives in La Conner- he counted 11 boats as total losses. He said it was a cluster___k with the volunteer fire department doing all they could, but being overwhelmed....

Ebbtide was on that dock until Thanksgiving Day last year. Holy crap!

Pau Hana said:

I just talked to a friend (and client) who lives in La Conner- he counted 11 boats as total losses. He said it was a cluster___k with the volunteer fire department doing all they could, but being overwhelmed....

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They forget about having to use foam sometimes....

Last boat fire I was involved in it took 30 minutes for the fireboat to show up and they had to run back and get foam...by then it was really too late.

Luckily I had towed the boat away from the fuel dock/marina so there were no other casualties.

At our Marina in BC there are frequent formal fire drills with fire boats, hose runs, foam, pumper trucks, Scott Airpaks etc commonly being in view. Two years ago there was a boat house fire which was confined to but a few due to a rapid and ready response.

Was it a volunteer group that responded at LaConnor? Isn't that side of the waterway on government land?

Tribal land Tom.

sunchaser said:

Was it a volunteer group that responded at LaConnor? Isn't that side of the waterway on government land?

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They responded engines from five stations. It was a mix of volunteer and full time firefighters from the surrounding area and a fire boat from Anacortes.
Fortunately, the fire was isolated to one dock of boats in the Shelter Bay Communities private marina. This is across the channel and South of downtown LaConner on leased Swinomish Tribal Land. It's not the much larger Port of Skagit County marina in La Conner proper.

We have very few dock fires in the Cal Delta

This is something that I here about with fair regularity in the PNW. This must be due to the large number of boats running heaters, maybe. Or is it just by the shear numbers of boats in the PNW. Just in time to ruin the new spring season for some.

Edelweiss said:

They responded engines from five stations. It was a mix of volunteer and full time firefighters from the surrounding area and a fire boat from Anacortes.
Fortunately, the fire was isolated to one dock of boats in the Shelter Bay Communities private marina. This is across the channel and South of downtown LaConner on leased Swinomish Tribal Land. It's not the much larger Port of Skagit County marina in La Conner proper.

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My understanding is that it was almost contained to the one dock but during the course of the fire one boat broke away and floated to another dock damaging some boats there. However, it was contained at the other dock to minimize damage. Also a couple of nearby homeowners did come in a dingy and tow four boats away including one that had it's side scorched already.

The fire must have both started and spread extremely rapidly for them not to have been able to remove any of the boats from the dock where it was. I think part of that too may have been the dock itself. I know the docks are old and there is an effort underway to put together a plan to replace them.

Smart Plug?

In Florida, fire fighting equipment is required for all marinas. While I know many marinas have not traditionally had such, when you think about the fact they have an endless source of water, it really seems dumb not to be able to fight a fire. Getting one when it is first noticed can often stem it quickly. Waiting for volunteers or distant municipalities to assist, it's often going to be too late. I also know of marinas on inland lakes who have purchased fire boats. That's not to say this fire could have been curtailed because I wasn't there and don't know how long before it was noticed. But it certainly would have improved the probability.

Bob Cofer said:

Smart Plug?

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Ha Ha!!! That was my first thought too. These were all larger diesel boats, so an electrical fire does sound plausible?? Time will tell.

I talked to one of the insurance reps who's company insured one of the seven boats that were total loss and they have no idea yet. They visited the site and talked with CG and ecology investigators. They know which boat the fire started on, based on witness accounts, but that is all.

It started near the head of the dock and spread quickly down the dock to the other six boats. All boats at J dock, six sank, a 7th remained afloat and an 8th boat had severe heat damage and scorching. Responders successfully moved the rest of the boats 4 to 6 to other docks, depending on who you talk to; several of these had heat damage and scorching.

Since this is a private boat harbor with an assortment of private and club owned docks, there were no fire hydrants or fire suppression equipment at or on the dock.

The good news was, nobody was hurt!!

Video here Shelter Bay Washington Marina fire - YouTube

It starts sideways but quickly gets corrected.

Edelweiss said:

Since this is a private boat harbor with an assortment of private and club owned docks, there were no fire hydrants or fire suppression equipment at or on the dock.

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Maybe it's time for that to change.

The small lake we lived on in NC before moving to Florida had an interesting collection of fire boats. There were seven on the lake. They weren't just there for docks but they were there to fight house fires. There are billions of dollars worth of homes on the lake and many are distant from hydrants that have good pressure. Like fire departments on land these boats also double as rescue boats. Now, as they aren't manned all the time I still don't know how much they'd help in a situation like this fire. They answer just over 100 calls per year in total.

At Shilshole in Seattle, there are fire hose connections at the head of each pair of docks (there is one access ramp for a pair of docks)-with outlets on the dock. A pumper truck can connect directly to these and to nearby hydrants to get high pressure water on the docks quickly. There is a fireboat downtown (probably 20-30 minutes away) and one on Lake Union that would have to get through the locks to get to Shilshole, probably and hour away.

One more time for anyone who has never fought a boat fire....FOAM!!!!

All the water in the world and dry chemical extinguishers used from the dock don't do a thing...except the water will eventually sink the hull in place after the fiberglass burns to the waterline...

OK maybe with water fog applicators in great hands or some kind of deluge system...but in my experience in dozens of boat/marina fires...it take experienced firefighters and the right equipment....

Plain water is useful to keep the fire from spreading if the water can be directed at the other boats while the primary fire is extinguished and burning fuel hasn't made its way to out of the burning hull yet.

psneeld said:

One more time for anyone who has never fought a boat fire....FOAM!!!!

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Only if the fire is fuel in the bilge and nothing else is burning yet ... which is a condition that will last only a minute or two then the battle is all but lost.

High pressure fog will work if there is someone on board who can apply it but by the time that person is suited up the battle is lost. That is why almost all new large yachts have a fog system installed, it give the crew time to call a mayday and bail out if it doesn't suppress the initial fire.

Deluge the good boats and limit the destruction appears to me to be the best if not only alternative. Fiberglass boats don't respond to fire fighting efforts very well.

Seems like all too often the resin catches and the flame front goes someplace you can't hit/cool with water...but foam blocks off the draft and eventually the foam reaches the actual flame front and extinguishes it.....that's not actual fire science...just my experience with it...

Not always that simple...the last fire I was on was a 17 foot CC that was filled with foam, gunnel to gunnel and had 2 reflashes before I got sent off on another call.

Haven't been around actual fog application since Officer Candidate School....just saw them break the applicators out for at sea drills since then.

Water, used correctly, has many uses and only sinks the boat that is too far along when started. Either water gets the first boat early or it's primary use becomes limiting the number of boats impacted. It can create a barrier much like is done fighting fires on land. Then it can also allow other boats to be moved away. Many marinas with a lot of houseboats have fireboats on site. Houseboats, especially older ones, tend to be involved in a lot of fires. With the fireboats docked at the marinas there they have been able to limit the damage significantly. Without it would go down a dock and get many boats if not all. Now in the same circumstances the damage is usually limited to no more than three boats and often only one boat has any serious damage and the two beside it just have smoke damage. Sometimes even the primary boat damage is quite limited.

The owners of our slip here in Seattle was one of the residence of Shelter Bay. They live just across from the marina and saw the fire coming closer to their boat. He was one of the people to get in a dinghy and save a few boats while they could. His was a 48ft Navigator that burned and then sank. This is a painful story.

BandB said:

Water, used correctly, (in my experience it rarely has been) has many uses and only sinks the boat that is too far along (not always) when started. Either water gets the first boat early (usually not a glass boat once the resin has really started to cook and that's usually long before trained/equipped guys show up) or it's primary use becomes limiting the number of boats impacted. True if enough hose teams are available) It can create a barrier much like is done fighting fires on land. Then it can also allow other boats to be moved away. Many marinas with a lot of houseboats have fireboats on site. Houseboats, especially older ones, tend to be involved in a lot of fires. With the fireboats docked at the marinas there they have been able to limit the damage significantly. Without it would go down a dock and get many boats if not all. Now in the same circumstances the damage is usually limited to no more than three boats and often only one boat has any serious damage and the two beside it just have smoke damage. Sometimes even the primary boat damage is quite limited.

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In general...marina fires usually have more than just a couple boats involved (at least the dozens of marina fires I have witnessed and the ones I usually read about)...because of the response time....the proximity of boats to one another, the marina layout and availability of water and then the first guys usually don't have or deploy foam fast enough.