Five people, including a 4-month-old baby, were rescued after a fire broke out Saturday afternoon on a boat in waters off Venice Beach, officials said.
Firefighters responded to the 35-foot vessel, located about 200 yards from the 1200 block of Ocean Front Walk, after lifeguards reported it was fully engulfed in flames, the Los Angeles County Fire Department said on Twitter at 3:16 p.m.
“The mother jumped in the water with her baby. She went under the water, luckily came up and was holding her infant,” said fire Capt. Kenichi Haskett, a spokesman for for the agency. “The lifeguard was right there — pretty much arm’s distance — and grabbed the baby.”
All five boaters were quickly rescued from the water, Haskett said, and the child was transported to a hospital as a precautionary measure. No injuries were reported.
The blaze was extinguished by 3:40 p.m., according to the department’s Lifeguard Division.
The Fire Department initially described the watercraft as a sailboat. A subsequent tweet from the Lifeguard Division confirmed it was a powerboat.
The division’s Twitter account preliminarily said six people were rescued from the vessel; that number was later updated to five. Paramedics checked the patients for smoke inhalation, according to the account.
Personnel from the Sheriff’s Department’s Marina del Rey station also responded to the blaze, which sent a long plume of black smoke into the air above the beach. The burned-out boat was towed to the station after the incident.
The cause of the fire was under investigation.
https://twitter.com/ManOfMystery014/status/668206379820150784
