Fishing vessel goes up in flames

Yarmouth County resident Arnold Porter stood on the Lobster Rock Wharf amid howling winds and bitter cold for many hours, watching as firefighters tried to save his boat, the Fundy Commander, after a fire broke out Thursday.

Porter had owned the fish dragger just shy of two years.

During that time he had never taken it out on a fishing trip, but it wasn’t for lack of effort in getting it to Yarmouth in the first place.

First built in Newfoundland for a fisherman from Digby, the vessel was later sold overseas, ending up in Holland instead.

Then someone from Newfoundland bought it during a foreclosure sale and was going to have it transported there.

“But his wife passed away. He was 67 years old and just kind of threw his hands in the air and was done with fishing so I bought it from him,” Porter said.

“So we went to Holland, put it on a container ship and brought it over,” he explained, saying the trip took around 11 days. “I was going to use it for crab fishing. Then I turned around and bought another licence that came with another boat so I used the other boat.”

So instead he’d been fixing up the Fundy Commander for sale.

Around 10 p.m. on Thursday, Porter got a telephone call telling him the boat was on fire at the Lobster Rock Wharf in Yarmouth.

Firefighters responded to the fire as a winter storm blew through the area. By the following morning the vessel was starting to sink alongside the wharf.

As firefighters had arrived at the wharf on Thursday night — and for hours afterward — a steady stream of smoke could be seen billowing from the boat. Aside from the smoke, also greeting firefighters were strong winds associated with a winter storm that had been affecting the province since that afternoon.

Waves churned violently at the wharf as firefighters went about their duties in very cold, windy and wet conditions.

The Environment Canada station at the Yarmouth Airport reported wind gusts ranging from 71 to 83 kilometres per hour while firefighters were at the wharf. They remained on scene all night and were still combating the fire as daylight broke Friday morning, Jan. 5.

But it was a lost cause. Yarmouth Fire Department platoon chief Peter Winship said firefighters were initially on board the vessel after arriving on the scene.

“The fire quickly changed inside and I made the call to pull everyone off the boat,” he said.

The blaze was in the engine room and difficult to access, he said, adding that there’s always a danger of explosion with boat fires.

Porter guessed the fire must have been electrical.

“Where it was would have been where the transformer would have been in the engine room, where your cord comes in from shore power,” he said. “So I’m guessing that’s what it was because everything else was turned off.”