A woman who witnessed the deadly boat explosion in Fort Lauderdale recalled the moments she and others tried to rescue victims—until their own vessel also caught fire.
It happened just before 6 p.m., when Fort Lauderdale Fire Rescue said they received multiple 911 calls reporting the explosion at Lauderdale Marina at 1900 SE 15th Street.
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WATCH HEREWithin seconds of arriving to a dock, video shows how a boat explodes and bursts into flames, the impact tossing the people inside the boat onto the water.
The explosion left one person dead and five others hospitalized, three of them with traumatic injuries, officials said.
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Maria Sanz said she and her family were on a boat right behind the one that exploded.
"I thought it was like, a firecracker, but I when I turned, it was a boat... We saw a lot of smoke," she recalled. "I was screaming, screaming, screaming, and they told us we had to get out right away."
She said they were trying to help rescue people from the water when the fire spread to their boat.
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"My cousin was kneeling in front of the boat, so I ran to her and I saw that she was holding on a girl, and the girl was kind of drowning. She was trying to put her head up so she wouldn’t drown," Sanz said.
When she turned around, she saw another victim in the water and tried to throw him a rope.
"I saw that a guy was kind of fighting, trying not to drown. I got off the boat, ran to the dock and started throwing a rope and I was screaming," she said.
Still, she added: "Nobody panicked. We all ran to see how we could help."
Sanz says as they were helping, their own boat caught fire.
"It started coming towards us, so the front part and side were starting to get on fire while we were still trying to get these people out of the water," she said.
The fire remains under investigation.
