Sam Amico
A pair of men who leaped from a burning boat in Michigan did so in the nick of time, and seemed fortunate a married couple was nearby to rescue them.
Videos by Rare
Video from the near-tragedy showed two men aboard a 21-foot Baja that went up in flames on West Grand Traverse Bay.
“It’s too late, guys,” one person said in the video. “It’s too late. Get off the boat. It’s gonna blow.”
That was uttered as the fire on the boat intensified … and the two men stood seemed to be waiting to see if things could be salvaged. They could not.
So the men had no choice but to jump overboard and count their blessings that Nathan Greenwood and his wife were there to offer a rescue.
“I knew very quickly that if they did not get off the boat, they were either going to pass out from the inhalation of the smoke, the heat, or it would end up eventually exploding,” Greenwod said, via ABC 11. “It’s really fortunate, because within three seconds of them jumping off of the boat, it exploded.”
Following the explosion, the boat sunk to the bottom of the bay.
As relayed by ABC 11, boating incidents have been fairly regular this summer, some even resulting in tragedy.
Last week, a 17-year-old girl died when a boat she was in collided with a jetty. Also, one woman died and five others injured when a boat crashed into a break wall on Lake Michigan last week.
“Anybody operating a boat, you need to know your navigational hazards, know your capabilities. Make sure you have life preserves on board for everybody,” said CFD Deputy District Chief Jason Lach, via ABC 11.
