Sitka firefighters spent over two hours putting out a boat fire in Birdsnest Bay on Friday (8-8-25). While the boat was a total loss, no one was injured in the blaze.
In an interview with KCAW, Sitka Fire Department Chief Craig Warren recalled that they were notified around 5pm of a large column of smoke in the Camp Coogan Bay area, a few miles southeast of Sitka.
“I happened to be on a walk through totem park with my wife,” said Warren. “So I was able to just poke my nose down onto the point there and say, ‘Yep, there’s a large plume of smoke. We obviously have a fire.'”
Two emergency response vessel crew members and four firefighters arrived at the scene by boat at 5:40pm. They found a 36 ft fiberglass boat, untethered from the nearby dock, enveloped in flames.
“They had a little bit of trouble with overhaul, because the cabin had kind of collapsed down on itself, and it’s hard to turn over pieces of fiberglass to get the hot spots underneath,” said Warren.
Firefighters extinguished the fire shortly before 8 p.m. but the boat was completely destroyed.
“The boat was deemed a total loss, so we won’t have a cause,” said Warren.
According to Warren, what remained of the boat was re-secured to the dock afterwards. Only one bystander, who is a relative of the boat’s owner, was present. No injuries were reported, and no other property damage occurred.
