Fire swept through and destroyed two boats which sank to the bottom of Cowichan Bay on Halloween night.
No one was injured. Duncan-North Cowichan RCMP said the fire is considered suspicious and that police are investigating.
The owner, a Cowichan Bay man, was not onboard at the time, RCMP Corp. Colin Cook said today. No one was injured.
An employee of Oceanfront Suites hotel at Cowichan Bay spotted the fire, which was reported shortly after 7 p.m. Saturday, Cook said.
The witness told police that the fire expanded in a matter of minutes.
Members of the Cowichan Bay Fire Department battled the blaze.
One wooden power boat and two fibreglass sailboats had been rafted together in the bay for seven to eight months, said Mark Mercer, wharfinger at the Fishermens Wharf.
He said that while the two sailboats, each about 26 feet long, appeared to be in fairly good shape, the power boat “had some issues.”
Cook said the fire set the third boat, a sailboat, adrift. It was towed to the government wharf.
RCMP will be speaking to Transport Canada and Environment Canada about the two boats on the seabed, he said.
This fire raises the issue around the long-standing problem of derelict boats, said Lori Iannidinardo, Cowichan Bay representative for the Cowichan Valley Regional District.
She is fed up with derelict vessels in the harbour and is calling on senior governments to step in.
“I think the province and the feds need to take some lead on this because it is a coast-to-coast issue.”
Derelict vessels and abandoned boats have been a long-time problem in Cowichan Bay, she said.
For example, the S.S. Beaver sank in 133-feet-deep water in the bay in 2014. It’s still there, she said.
Iannidinardo is not familiar with the vessels that caught on fire. There are, however, two derelict and abandoned vessels on the beach near where the burned vessels were located.
Those abandoned boats are on Pacific sand lance spawning area and should be removed, she said. Sand lances are slender fish, also known as sand eels, that burrow in sand.
Air pollution from the fire, potential of fuel leaking from the sunken boats, and dangers to navigation are among Iannidinardo’s worries about the fire’s impact.
The local government’s goal is to see shellfish harvesting resume by 2020, but that means this kind of danger from pollution has to be reined in. “It’s a death by 1,000 cuts,” she said. “It just adds to the dilemma.”
Washington State has a program for a derelict boats and that model that could be adopted in Canada, Iannidinardo said.
Old boats are mapped and an inventory is created. “It’s all set up. It’s a perfect example of how to do this right.”
These vessels “need a graveyard.” she said.
Transport Canada has released a discussion paper to vet the idea of bringing in rules to address shipwrecks.
Owners would be required to remove their own wrecks and cover those costs. Federal authorities would also be able to step in to remove a wreck and have the expense charged to the owner.
“Marine casualties often result in a number of potential or actual shipwrecks in Canada’s internal waters and territorial sea each year,” Transport Canada said in its paper.
“While many potential shipwrecks are successfully salvaged and put back into service, the removal or remediation of those that are not successfully salvaged can be costly.”
Abandoned boats and wrecks are frequent sights along B.C.’s coast.
