A tourist boat that was berthed at an island near Thanthonni Thuruth located off Kochi was gutted in a fire on Friday.
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Mulavukadu Police have registered a case and are probing the cause of fire that was detected a little after 10 a.m.
The 17-seater boat was surveyed earlier this year after being dry docked and had been named Island de Cochin. It had smoke and fire sensor on board. An employee detected the fire and raised an alarm, following which water pumps were activated and efforts made to douse the fire. Fire-tender boats of the Fire and Rescue Services and the Coastal Police helped douse the fire, by which time much of the vessel was gutted, said Denny Thomas, who procured it recently for tourism operations in the backwaters.
It is suspected that the fire was triggered by a mosquito coil that had been lit within the vessel by fishermen who sometimes slept within the 11-metre-long boat. Damage of around ₹7 lakh is estimated, he added.
An official of Fire and Rescue Services said that the vessel’s interiors were almost fully gutted in the fire by the time a fire-tender boat arrived at the island. It has a third-party insurance cover (meaning insurance was limited to passengers).