SCOTTSBORO, Ala. — A massive fire that killed at least eight people and destroyed dozens of boats in an Alabama marina early Monday was spread so rapidly by the wind that “we didn’t have time to do nothing,” said one resident who survived but lost his brother in the cold water.
Tommy Jones, a Jackson County Park Marina resident, said he also watched helplessly as a small boat containing a woman and her children was engulfed in flames.
“There was nothing we could do,” he said.
Scottsboro Fire Chief Gene Necklaus said all eight people who were known to be missing have been confirmed dead, and “that number could go up, because we don’t know how many were on boats” that sank.
The fire began just after midnight and quickly consumed the dock as people slept. The wooden dock and at least 35 vessels went up in flames and an aluminum roof that covered many of the boats melted and collapsed, cutting off escape routes and raining debris over the area as boaters leaped into the river.
Jones said he was aboard his 35-foot cabin cruiser when someone came banging on the boat after midnight saying, “Man, the marina is on fire.” The flames were racing out to the far end of the dock where Jones’ boat was tied.
Jones said he and several other men cut some boats free and sent them drifting out into the water. When a man placed his wife and children into a small boat, they cut that boat free too. Finally, Jones said, he jumped into the water and swam for shore, 200 yards away.
He believes his brother Yancey Roper, who lived aboard another boat, swam in a different direction. Officials later told him that his brother had drowned.
As Jones was swimming for shore in water with a temperature in the mid-50s, he said, “I looked back and that other boat with the wife and the children on it was all engulfed in flames.”
At least seven people were sent to hospitals suffering from exposure to the flames or the frigid water.
“It was scary. The worst thing for me is you could hear people screaming for help, and there was nothing we could do. Nobody could do anything to get to them,” said Julie Jackson, who lives with her husband and son in a houseboat on another dock that did not burn.