One person is dead and five others were hospitalized after a boat explosion at a marina in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on Monday, officials said.
Fort Lauderdale Fire Rescue responded to multiple 911 calls reporting an explosion aboard a vessel at the Lauderdale Marina just before 6 p.m. They arrived to find a significant fire on one vessel that quickly spread to a second.
Five people were transported to nearby hospitals, three with traumatic injuries, officials said. They said that divers searched the water for one person who was missing after the blast. The Broward Sheriff’s Office later found that person deceased.
The explosion was captured on an EarthCam feed set up at the marina. The video shows the moment the boat exploded and over three minutes of the aftermath. People can be seen running up and down the dock as the boat fire grows larger and black smoke billows into the sky.
Maria Sanz told NBC News South Florida that she and her family were on a boat right behind the one that exploded.
"I thought it was like, a firecracker, but when I turned, it was a boat... We saw a lot of smoke," she said. "I was screaming, screaming, screaming, and they told us we had to get out right away."
Despite those orders, Sanz told NBC South Florida her family was trying to help rescue people from the water when the fire spread to their boat.
"My cousin was kneeling in front of the boat, so I ran to her and I saw that she was holding on to a girl, and the girl was kind of drowning," she said. "She was trying to put her head up so she wouldn’t drown."
Sanz said that when she turned around, she saw another victim in the water and tried to throw him a rope.
"I saw that a guy was kind of fighting, trying not to drown," she said. "I got off the boat, ran to the dock and started throwing a rope and I was screaming."
As this was happening, Sanz told NBC South Florida her own boat caught on fire.
"It started coming towards us, so the front part and side were starting to get on fire while we were still trying to get these people out of the water," she said.
Multiple agencies are coordinating investigation efforts to determine the cause of the explosion, including the Fort Lauderdale Police Department, Broward Sheriff's Office, Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and the U.S. Coast Guard. Fire officials said that once the vessels have been removed from the water and can be more closely examined by investigators, they'll have a better idea of what happened.
