An explosive six-alarm fire roared through the Mattapoisett Boatyard on Buzzards Bay in Massachusetts on Friday afternoon. About 100 firefighters tried to extinguish the fast-spreading fire for more than five hours. Four people were injured, including three firefighters who were later released from the hospital. A 50-year-old man was seriously burned and remained in the hospital.
All told, the fire destroyed five buildings, dozens of boats and more than three dozen vehicles. A yard worker told WJAR-TV that a boat in one of the yard’s sheds caught fire “and it went up very, very fast. Everything went up.”
“We had a tremendous amount of fire in the main building and surrounding buildings,” Andrew Murray, the Mattapoisett fire chief, said at a news conference. He said drought conditions and high winds contributed to the severity of the fire. “The winds definitely pushed the fire,” he said.
The fire started about 1:30 and it spread throughout the boatyard in about 15 minutes. People living nearby reported hearing popping sounds as fuel and other combustibles exploded.
Mattapoisett is about halfway between Marion and New Bedford. Firefighters from as far away as Providence, Rhode Island, 30 miles from Mattapoisett, raced to the yard. The fire was confined to the land part of the yard, but several fireboats arrived to spray water over the flames. A frightening black plume of smoke was so intense that the Weather Service in Boston reported seeing it on radar.
The Mattapoisett yard has been a family-owned business since 1962. It’s a full-service yard, holding 150 boats. It’s often filled with a lot of Downeast boats. Read more at https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/19/us/boatyard-fire-massachusetts-mattapoisett-buzzards-bay/index.html
and see the video below:
