greasemonkeyjmj
Petty Officer 1st Class
- Joined
- Jul 7, 2008
- Messages
- 264
Thirty two boats at Lake Ouachita's Mountain Harbor Marina were destroyed by a fire. Investigators are trying to determine the cause.
"Everything was on fire. Flames were licking out of both end of the dock, out from under the eaves. As you looked under the dock, every boat that was there was on fire," one witness recounted.
Hours later, a small flame still licked at the dock totally destroyed in the early hours of Monday morning.
A man sleeping on his boat heard an explosion just after two a.m.
"And he walked out of the front of his boat and looked down the dock toward the shore, and saw the runabout and stall completely engulfed in flame," says Bill Barnes, he is the Fire Chief of the Joplin Volunteer Fire Department.
He says the man woke up his wife and then saved another couple sleeping in a nearby boat.
Barnes says, "He woke up the other couple. And then the two men got garden hoses and attempted to fight the fire. But by the time that they got the hoses stretched out, it was so hot there were already two more boats on fire."
Park rangers from the Army Corps of Engineers are using special absorbent barriers to clean the slime and debris from the waters. Still trapped in the 29 boats sunk or destroyed, hundreds of gallons of gas.
Bill Jackson, a Park Ranger for the Army Corps of Engineers says, "Right now what we're trying to do is anything that escaped during the fire, that we're ensuring is contained in this small area. Then whenever they do start the recovery and start removing the damaged dock, that with the containment, it will keep all that product in that one area."
Four boats were saved. Two belonged to the couples sleeping at the dock. They got their boats out, and firefighters managed to save two other sailboats moored at the very end of the dock.
Everything else is a total loss.
"Everything was on fire. Flames were licking out of both end of the dock, out from under the eaves. As you looked under the dock, every boat that was there was on fire," one witness recounted.
Hours later, a small flame still licked at the dock totally destroyed in the early hours of Monday morning.
A man sleeping on his boat heard an explosion just after two a.m.
"And he walked out of the front of his boat and looked down the dock toward the shore, and saw the runabout and stall completely engulfed in flame," says Bill Barnes, he is the Fire Chief of the Joplin Volunteer Fire Department.
He says the man woke up his wife and then saved another couple sleeping in a nearby boat.
Barnes says, "He woke up the other couple. And then the two men got garden hoses and attempted to fight the fire. But by the time that they got the hoses stretched out, it was so hot there were already two more boats on fire."
Park rangers from the Army Corps of Engineers are using special absorbent barriers to clean the slime and debris from the waters. Still trapped in the 29 boats sunk or destroyed, hundreds of gallons of gas.
Bill Jackson, a Park Ranger for the Army Corps of Engineers says, "Right now what we're trying to do is anything that escaped during the fire, that we're ensuring is contained in this small area. Then whenever they do start the recovery and start removing the damaged dock, that with the containment, it will keep all that product in that one area."
Four boats were saved. Two belonged to the couples sleeping at the dock. They got their boats out, and firefighters managed to save two other sailboats moored at the very end of the dock.
Everything else is a total loss.