One person died and another three remained unaccounted for after a pleasure boat capsized in the San Francisco Bay on Tuesday afternoon, fire officials said.
Sixteen people were rescued, three of whom had injuries severe enough to require treatment at a hospital, said Lt. Mariano Elias of the San Francisco Fire Department. A dog that had also been aboard the boat died, he said.
In total, there had been 20 people on board the three-story boat, and three of them remained missing on Tuesday night, according to Lt. Elias.
Earlier in the day, the San Francisco fire chief, Dean Crispen, told reporters there were 19 people on board, with two missing. But that count left out the captain of the boat.
The passengers were family members spreading the ashes of a loved one in the bay’s waters, Lt. Elias said. He added that the group was not from the Bay Area.
Three of those aboard were being treated for what appeared to be impact injuries from hitting the water, Chief Crispen said.
Another passenger was found “severely injured” and needed cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Rescue workers immediately brought the patient to the shore, he said, but the person died.
Lt. Elias said on Tuesday night that rescuers were continuing to look for the three missing passengers. “We’re going to keep searching through the evening into the morning,” he said.
Several boats from multiple fire departments were on the water helping with the search.
“This is an all-hands-on-deck search, and hopefully, rescue,” Mayor Daniel Lurie of San Francisco said at the afternoon news conference with Chief Crispen.
It was unclear what caused the boat, which authorities identified as the Volare, to sink. Officials initially said there had been a fire onboard, but they later said there was no evidence of a blaze. Late Tuesday, the Fire Department said that callers who reported the vessel in distress had misinterpreted steam as smoke.
The vessel — which officials initially called a pontoon boat but later identified as a 49-foot cabin cruiser — capsized at around 3:30 p.m. about 600 yards from Alcatraz Island, officials said. Alcatraz is a tourist destination best known for its shuttered federal prison.
The narrow passage between Alcatraz and the northern shore of San Francisco tends to be incredibly windy in the summer, particularly in the afternoons. It also acts as a bottleneck that quickens the current, creating waves that can be as much as nine feet high, said Steve Jones, a local marine surveyor with decades of boating experience.
He said that the area can be “very treacherous for any kind of boat,” particularly now, since the Bay Area is experiencing king tides.
Chief Crispen said that he had spoken to some of the survivors, who were “incredibly upset.” He said that the boat was mostly submerged when rescue workers arrived.
“Some people were in the water. Some people were on the boat. Some people were just falling into the water,” he said. He added that it was unclear if anyone had been wearing life preservers.
Randell Sharpe, a marine accident investigator in the Bay Area, said that, based on news images of the vessel, it may have been overloaded with 20 passengers. The extra weight would have made it more likely to capsize if it began taking on water for some reason, he said.
