A woman thrown overboard when her boat exploded Sunday afternoon in the waters off North Haven survived the incident, though the boat did not, according to the New York State Harbormaster and Bay Constable Association.
The association said in a Facebook post that a nearby good Samaritan “pulled the person out of the water with non-life-threatening injuries” as first responders, including the Southampton Town bay constables, Sag Harbor harbormaster, Sag Harbor Fire Department, Shelter Island Fire Department, and the U.S. Coast Guard, arrived to contain the flames.
At around 2 p.m., a number of North Haven residents saw and heard the boat go up in flames, including Anthony Coron. He said by phone on Tuesday that he heard a loud boom, kind of like “the starting cannon for the sailboat races that go on here every Wednesday,” followed by another “somewhat different explosion sound.”
“The smoke was incredibly thick. It was like black paint,” Mr. Coron said. “Eventually you started to see there was a vicious flame to it. It kept getting worse and worse.”
A slight odor of smoke could be detected. “The wind was blowing to the north . . . which saved us from getting a face full of it,” Mr. Coron recalled. “There was a haze that crept over here.”
From Shelter Island, a fire truck with a crew of a dozen boarded one of the South Ferry’s boats, ready to respond, as another crew of five headed to the scene in a fire vessel. The boat in distress “was fully involved when we got the call,” said Shelter Island Fire Department Chief Anthony Reiter. “Upon arrival, I determined that it was already moving quickly with the tides. That’s why we called for mutual aid right away.”
“The fire started on the Shelter Island side,” he continued, “and with the tide and the current, within 15 or 20 minutes or so it was in the Sag Harbor vicinity.”
Bystanders’ photos and videos of the incident show what appears to be a small speedboat with a red hull completely ablaze, sending up a large column of smoke before it sank. The cause is still under investigation, according to the Sag Harbor harbormaster’s office.
Chief Reiter said this kind of incident was “not rare at all. This time of the year, we are definitely prepared and expecting fires or other injuries on the water, especially with the amount of boat traffic we have. It’s about everybody coming together to have the best outcome that we can.”