A video posted to Reddit shared a terrifying video of a boat that caught on fire and eventually sank.
The footage, shared with the r/TerrifyingAsF*** community, showed the catamaran ablaze.
The people on board the boat were trying to put the fire out, but they were having little to no success.
The fire spread quickly, and those on board were quickly forced to abandon ship. Within three minutes of the person shooting the video's arrival, the boat had completely sunk, and the fire had been extinguished.
"That sank really fast," one commenter noted. "Thankfully everybody made it off safe."
Boats like this catamaran are hardly the kind of environmental threat that larger yachts are, but that doesn't mean they're environmentally friendly, either.
This particular model appears to be a Lagoon 52 S, which has both sails and a 262-gallon diesel engine. When it's sailing, there are obviously no emissions, but when the engine is engaged, it's pumping exhaust from that diesel into the atmosphere.
On top of that, boat fires are nothing to trifle with. Many of the materials used in a lot of smaller vessels like this one are incredibly flammable, meaning any sort of fire spreads quickly once it takes hold.
Things like the gel coat and the fiberglass hull are both a real danger once they catch fire, and once they're alight, there's not much that can be done to save the vessel. With things like fuel tanks for the engine and propane for kitchen appliances like stoves, things can get downright explosive in a ship fire rapidly.
The aftermath of a fire and sinking ship has even more environmental danger; you now have tanks of propane and diesel fuel sinking to the bottom of the ocean, where they could potentially rupture, creating a toxic situation for the delicate undersea ecosystems.
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Majorly 😥 That's why most countries enforce laws that ensure owners are responsible for the immediate salvage of a vessel that sinks to prevent it from causing an ecological crisis.
Commenters were quick to note some of the potential issues from this fire.
"I'm not an expert on this, but I don't think burning fiberglass fumes are good for your respiratory system," one said.
"As a yacht captain and someone that has experience doing fiberglass and gelcoat work, I can tell you that once the hull is burning like that, there is no way you're putting that out with B-II extinguishers," another added. "I don't care how many you have."
"The heat from burning fiberglass is immense," a third observed. "The only solution is to start up your firefighting pumps, mix in a lot of foam and coat everything in foam. There will be nests in the collapsed structure which weren't extinguished and they will continue to ignite for hours."
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