■ Fishing fire
Engineering assessment of wharf required
Firefighters from several fire departments battled a fire that engulfed the lobster fishing vessel Gail’s Force II and spread to the wharf on the Town Point Road in Yarmouth County last week. An engineer’s assessment still had to be carried out to examine the structural integrity of the wharf.
A fire at a fishing wharf is never a good thing but firefighters say one that happened in Yarmouth County last week could have been much worse if not for the help of local fishermen.
The lobster fishing vessel Gail’s Force II at the Town Point Wharf in Rockville, Yarmouth County, was destroyed by fire the afternoon of April 24.
Firefighters from several departments fought the blaze that occurred just over a month before the end of the commercial lobster season.
Other fishermen at the wharf – after moving their boats out of harm’s way away from the flames – did what they could to help firefighters douse the fire on the boat and the wharf by circling the wharf with their vessels and using hoses on their boats to douse the flames. Firefighters were also able to get onboard other vessels to gain better access to the burning boat and the underside of the wharf.
It was suspected the fire onboard the boat may have been electrical. There were no reported injuries. At the scene people said the boat belonged to Yarmouth County fisherman Randy Purdy.
The fire started before 3 p.m. “I was sitting at my desk and I happened to look out my window and saw big puffs of smoke,” said Tracy Porter of Rockville Carriers, the lobster pound located adjacent to the wharf. She and her son Nicky then looked out the window again and saw a boat in flames.
When firefighters arrived on the scene, the boat – which was tied on the inside of the wharf – was ablaze and thick, black smoke was billowing from it.
Parts of the wharf also caught fire. Vehicles belonging to fishermen that were on the wharf were moved off of it, with the exception of one truck that couldn’t be driven off at that time. It was moved off a couple of days later.
Hank Nickerson, the incident commander from the Yarmouth Fire Department, said the fishermen were a great help in fighting the fire.
Nickerson said it wasn’t safe to put firetrucks on the firedamaged section of the wharf while the fire was happening, which is why the fishing boats were so helpful.
“We got (the boat fire) under control and then started fighting the fire on the wharf. We did have assistance from local fishermen, using their vessels to help us get underneath the wharf,” he said. “They were a great help to us. If it wasn’t for that it would have been harder for us.”
The wharf had a lot of creosote, which also complicated the matter, said Nickerson. “It’s hard to fight. You need a lot of water and lot of foam to fight that,” he said.
Fortunately, no other boats caught fire.
Seven boats are reported to normally dock at this wharf. Some boats were out fishing at the time of the fire.
Numerous fire departments responded to the blaze, including Yarmouth, Wedgeport, Port Maitland, Eel Brook and Lake Vaughan.
At one point a tow line was fastened to the burning boat and from shore fishermen and bystanders pulled the rope to drag the boat to a better vantage point to fight the fire.
For hours throughout the evening tanker trucks filled up with water from a hydrant at the town/county limits, many kilometres away, and transported the water back to the wharf to keep the fire involving the wharf under control.
As of this newspaper’s deadline on Monday, the condition of the wharf was still uncertain. A section of the wharf was off limits to fishermen and the public.
Jake MacLeay, DFO manager for Small Craft Harbours, said an engineering assessment was required to determine if the wharf could still be used.
“We’re working on having an engineer get down. It’s a matter of figuring out who it is going to be and working out all those details,” MacLeay said on April 30.
He said the fishermen were still able to use the stem of the wharf, which he described as the main part of the wharf.
“They just can’t use the ‘L’, the part that goes over to the righthand side,” he said. DFO held a meeting last week with the fishermen who use the wharf to explain the situation.
“They understand and they’re working around it as best they can,” MacLeay said.
What needs to be determined, meanwhile, is whether the wharf can be repaired or if a part of it needs to be demolished and rebuilt.
“We’ll have to look and see how much damage the fire caused. Everything is wood underneath so did it penetrate in so far that it has to be removed and do you remove just that section that burnt? Or do you have to rip down the whole section and rebuild it? That’s what we have to figure out,” said MacLeay.
So if the wharf has to be rebuilt, who would be responsible for the cost?
“Well,” said MacLeay, “it’s a federal government wharf. How insurance and all that plays out, I don’t know all of the ins and outs. We don’t have insurance on our wharfs, so to speak. At the end of the day it’s our wharf. If we rebuild it, it will probably be us to have to pay for it.”