Early Friday morning a fire at the Richmond Yacht Basin ripped through the marina completely torching as many as 15 boats along with a large part of the boat storage structure. There are no reported injuries.
“The problem is, so much of the structure over the boats has collapsed down on it, it’s hard to tell” the extent of the damage,” said Capt. Taylor Goodman of the Henrico Fire Department.
According to officials the fire was reported at about 7 a.m. by a neighbor who saw the smoke billowing from the docks.
Mitch Romig, from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, was renting a houseboat at the marina for the night, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported.
“We heard someone running around saying the marina was on fire. So we got up and got off the boat as quickly as we could,” he told the newspaper. “It was pretty big already (when we got off the boat). I don’t know how many boats on the end were all already … on fire — pretty big flames.”
Five or six of the boats have reportedly sunk with several others floating down the river ablaze as if part of a funeral barge procession.
It’s not clear what had started the blaze but Goodman said he expects firefighters to be at the scene most of Friday and Saturday.
