Fire officials are still looking into the cause of a fire that destroyed a yacht at Rockport’s Ed Huck Marine on Canada Day.
According to Steve Wallace, a passerby who shot video of the boat going up in flames, the blaze started around 2 p.m. on Monday.
Leeds and Thousand Islands fire Chief Rick Lawson said the boat was between 53 and 63 feet long and had an estimated value of $350,000.
The fire started on the upper deck, Lawson said, and continued down until the boat was nearly destroyed.
Lawson also said the fire department needed to get a barge to pump out the water that sprayed into the boat. Emergency officials were concerned the structure of the boat would give way due to the extreme damage from the fire as well as the amount of water pumped into the boat.
In the end, Lawson said they pumped about 80,000 pounds of water from the St. Lawrence River into the structure to quell the flames.
Lawson says another yacht next to the one that caught fire was also severely damaged due to flames and smoke. The second boat had an estimated value of $900,000.
The cause of the fire is still unknown.
More to come.