1 Killed, 2 Hurt in Pier Fire at Morro Bay

Flames engulfed the wooden pier in Morro Bay early Thursday morning, killing 1 man, injuring 2 others and destroying 10 boats and 2 cars.

The man who died, a commercial fisherman whose name was not released, was asleep in his boat when the fire broke out on the pier and spread to his vessel, said U.S. Coast Guard spokesman Greg Ozzimo.

The fire began at dawn on the T-shaped pier, and within 10 minutes, flames had engulfed the entire pier, authorities said. There is no dollar estimate of damage, and the cause of the fire is under investigation.

“There were flames 25 feet in the air, and huge clouds of smoke blew over the area,” said Paul Janetski, a cook at Dorn’s Original Breakers, a restaurant a few hundred yards from the pier. “Each time you saw a quick flare-up and a mass of smoke, you knew another boat caught fire.”

Nearly Drowned

An elderly man and woman jumped from their burning boat and were pulled out of the water by rescue crews, Ozzimo said. Naomi Griffith, 78, was reported in critical condition at Sierra Vista Regional Medical Center in San Luis Obispo after nearly drowning. Henry Pederson, 70, suffered hypothermia but was listed in good condition at the medical center.

The waterfront of Morro Bay, a town of about 10,000, 175 miles northwest of Los Angeles, is lined with restaurants and souvenir shops. But because the winds were blowing away from the shore and the tides were running out to sea, Ozzimo said, no businesses were damaged.

“The winds often blow toward the shore around here, and if they had been blowing that way this morning, we would have lost quite a few businesses,” Ozzimo said. “We would have had a much worse fire to deal with. We were lucky with the tides too because when the burning boats broke away, they drifted out into the bay, away from shore.”

Many of the fishermen and boat owners who lived aboard their vessels were eventually able to get their boats untied before the fire reached them.

The pier, which was built in 1981, is still standing, but the fire damage is so extensive that sections of the pier will have to be dismantled and reconstructed, authorities said.

Because the pier was soaked with the petroleum-based material creosote--used to protect the wood from saltwater--the fire was extremely difficult to contain, Ozzimo said.