Cleanup and investigation continued Tuesday at Portman Marina on Lake Hartwell as officials tried to determine what it would take for the landmark to recover from one of the largest boat fires in recent memory.
According to Independent Mail, at least 16 boats were destroyed, sunk or heavily damaged Monday afternoon when a generator backfired on one vessel, caused it to catch fire and then spread the blaze to other boats, Townville Fire Chief Billy McAdams said. The man who had the generator suffered burns but is expected to recover from his injuries, officials said. He remains at the Joseph M. Still Burn Center in Augusta, Georgia, and his identity has not been made public.
Max Shaffer of Greenville, who had a boat slip at Portman Marina’s Dock 6 for 12 years, watched his boat burn and then sink. A friend of his saw an Independent Mail story posted on Facebook soon after the fire started and sent Shaffer a link to the post.
“I had a 2005 Chaparral that I bought brand-new,” he said. “It was our dream boat, my wife’s and mine. We spent every weekend on it that we could, as soon as I could leave work on Friday afternoon and get down to Anderson. We’d stay on the boat until Monday morning sometimes. It was our second home, and all of our neighbors on Dock 6, they became our family. I am so glad that nobody died. That’s the important thing. Still, this is a loss, a hurt in the family.”
That dock has 44 boat slips, and all but two were filled when the fire started, Irby said. She spent Tuesday morning trying to arrange moving unscathed boats from Dock 6 to open slips on Dock 9.
As of this week, cleanup efforts were continuing and the marina has reopened, although Dock 6 is currently inaccessible. A story by the Independent Mail said unscathed boats were being moved and the Department of Natural Resources was investigating the incident.
Greg Lucas with the DNR said that his department would only be brought in to assess any environmental damage if there was a large fish kill as a result of the fire or petroleum leaks and that they have not been called in.
A Great Blue Heron looks for food on the shore of Lake Hartwell near dock six, while investigators work on collecting information the morning after Anderson County firemen put out a Monday’s large fire, at Portman Marina in Anderson on Tuesday. Photo Courtesy: Ken Ruinard/Independent Mail
“For the fish, they can just move away,” Lucas said. “And with so much human interaction around the marina, there wouldn’t be a lot of animals around to be affected. They aren’t contained, so they can move and it won’t change much.”
DHEC’s biggest concerns are potential petroleum discharges, Moore said. How deep that concern might be, she said, was not known at this time.
Portman Marina sits on 44 acres and was opened in 1963, the same year that the Lake Hartwell dam project was finished, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Each year, the property near the South Carolina-Georgia border draws thousands of recreational boaters, and May marks the beginning of the marina’s busy season.