Miami Beach Marina fire

The name of the Lazzara was Grand Larceny and the Viking was Vera D.

I'm at the marina on my yacht just one dock over. I have some pretty ridiculous video of the fire that I'll post links to once I upload them. Pretty scary stuff.

Actually, you can see Vivere in the picture in the article in the upper left corner.

Miami Beach Yacht Fire...Lazzara 80SC

When the home videos are posted, leave some of your input about what took place and did you happen to know what started this?

Yachts don't burn like this normally. Where was the captain of the boat?

I didn't see the beginning of the fire. I was asleep in my room and a crew member came and woke me up. There was a ton of smoke and some embers were making it here, so the crew was up continuously spraying the decks down to avoid any damage.

I believe the crew of the yacht was onboard and got who they could off. I doubt it was suspicious since some their were some children stuck below. I'll have the video up in a day or two..

I agree. All it takes is one loose screw on either the shore cord or at the boat's shore cord receptacle for a leg to get hot enough to burn.

Here is a link to the videos:

http://myvivere.com/fire.html

Looks like the Viking 74 SF in the vids?

It's both of them... here is the aftermath:

Very sad.........looks terrible.

Aftermath

There must be better photos out there. I hope someone has them and will post hi-res formats of them.

I was at the Gangplank Marina in DC the other year when they had a fire, it was on G dock and I was on C dock by the time I got to G dock the whole boat was engulfed. It doesn't take long for these to spread, the damage to the boats on either side was a total destruction to those also.

These fires are scary and can spread very quickly, they were lucky at the Gangplank because the metro marine fire unit is only about a city block down the channel. They responded quickly and had the fire contained with in minutes.

It doesn't take suspicous activity to cause this, an electrical short, an accident on board, etc.. can cause them.

I've responded to more than a dozen boat/marina fires in the past ten years. In almost every case it was related to the shore power connection on the boat's side. Other causes have been space heaters, careless fueling practices (gas in bilge) and electrical shorts on the 12v side. Only one boat survived the fire and is better than new, and that was just pure luck.

Okay...that makes sense however, the boat side, meaning the interface connections on the yacht or the extension cord or the marina equipment being used etc? Please elaborate a tad.

I was very lucky last summer with my boat. I stopped by the slip to just check on things and found the was no shore power on the boat. I checked the breakers on the dock and they were not tripped.

I then checked the shore power connection and the plug end of the cord was black. Looking into the boat's connector I found it severly scorched, blackened and one of the male contacts was burned completely away from the connector.

I pulled the connector out of the boat and found the plastic cover on the back of the plug was melted, the screw connector where the wire attached to that loose contact was burned as was the wire insulation for about 2" back from the connector.

I am not sure what stopped the heat/fire, but I'm thankful it did not get any hotter and spread to the rest of the boat. A new shore power cord and boat-side connector were all that was needed to make it good as new.

Smoke alarms - not a requirement

Smoke alarms would have made a big difference here. The possible cause is careless smoking.

If smoke alarms were installed on this boat the fire would have been detected at 2AM and exteinguished with a garden hose.

Nearly every boat over 40 feet has a stateroom with only one way out. Egress in the time of a fire is a problem.

If the boating industry is going to build boats with limited egress, it should provide the consumer with early warning detection.

Why doesn't a $5 million yacht have a smoke alarm?