Ashley Pelayo works in South San Francisco, right next to the Oyster Cove Marina. It was a little after seven in the morning when she and her co-worker noticed black smoke coming from the water.
“I do my walks here, like, every day, so I knew that there was people on these boats,” Pelayo said.
She called 911 right away, and the dispatcher told her they had a lot of calls coming in about the fires.
“So the only thing that we could do is, like, wait for everyone to just come and arrive and to help. That's when we noticed that there was an explosion. So I'm assuming one of the propane tanks or something on the boat was exploding. And then the flames went super high. And that's when we saw people jumping out of the boat.”
Ashley says she saw people jumping from their boats and swimming to shore. But one person stayed behind, holding onto a rope at the bow of the ship.
“Everyone that was on shore was kind of like, get away from there, get away from there, let go, because the boat was capsizing, like, it was completely on fire.”
When the rescue team arrived, they tried to throw him a buoy but he couldn’t grab it.
“He yelled out, 'I can't swim!' So they got closer, they were able to give it to him and he was actually able to be rescued.”
By noon, the fire department had begun cleaning up any oil that may have spilled from the fires. To do that, they used “oil booms”: temporary barriers that float in the water to contain the spill. This is Bryan Saenz, he’s the battalion chief of the South San Francisco Fire Department.
“So, any oils or petroleum that float to the surface of the water, the booms we'll put around those and it'll stay within the confinement of that boom. So it doesn't drift out any further coastal waters. And then the remainder of cleanup will be on the United States Coast Guard.”
According to Saenz, one person was taken to the hospital for injuries. The cause of the fire is still under investigation.
