The Associated Press
GIG HARBOR, Wash. - A downtown marina was engulfed in flames early Wednesday, spewing billowing black smoke as 50 boats burned to the waterline.
No injuries were reported, but damage at the covered Harborview Marina was likely to run into the millions of dollars, fire spokeswoman Penny Hulse said. One person living aboard a boat fled, but his boat was charred, she said.
A fire boat was sent from nearby Tacoma to assist.
The fire was reported by somebody on land, and 20 minutes later the marina was an inferno, authorities said.
''The whole roof is down at the dock level right now, just a rumpled pile of blackened aluminum,’' said teacher Ross Pomerenk, who has a boat at a nearby marina. ''It’s really depressing. I feel sorry for those poor people.’'
The cause wasn’t immediately known, Hulse said, but ''we do know that it started on one boat.’'
''Fuel and fiberglass burn very quickly,’' she said. ''When we arrived, the flames were 30 feet high.’'
Janis McKee, a cook at the nearby Tides Tavern, said she was drawn outside by the sound of boats exploding.
''The smoke was just hurling out of there,’' she said.
Gig Harbor is on the Key Peninsula at the south end of Puget Sound, about 45 miles south of Seattle.