A three-deck recreational pontoon boat carrying 19 people capsized and sank Tuesday afternoon in the cold, current-swept waters of San Francisco Bay, roughly 600 yards from Alcatraz Island, killing one person, leaving two others missing and sending rescue crews scrambling in what the city’s mayor described as an “all-hands-on-deck” emergency.
One of the survivors was brought to shore severely injured, received CPR on the dock, and was later pronounced dead. Three others were transported to area hospitals in unknown condition, while 13 people were safely rescued and a dog aboard the vessel also died. As of Tuesday evening, two people remained unaccounted for, with authorities saying the search would continue well into the night.
San Francisco Fire Chief Dean Crispen reported the toll and said crews that arrived on the scene found the three-deck pontoon vessel almost fully underwater, with the motor still running and leaking fuel.
An Afternoon Outing Turns Catastrophic
The vessel was reported to be on fire around 600 yards off Alcatraz around 3:35 p.m., and police found a capsized three-deck pontoon boat. Fire Lieutenant Mariano Elias said the emergency call came in just after 3:30 p.m. and the vessel was described as a “pontoon pleasure boat.” Despite the initial report, the San Francisco Fire Department initially responded to a report of a vessel fire, but crews instead found a capsized boat, and Crispen later said there was no evidence of a fire.
The vessel was believed to have launched near the St. Francis Yacht Club in San Francisco. A person who answered the phone there said the club did not have any information on what happened. Every person on the boat is believed to have been an adult, the fire chief confirmed.
Live video captured from the scene and broadcast by local stations showed the pontoon boat nearly fully submerged, with personal belongings and debris floating in the water around it. Other videos showed a man and a woman wrapped in blankets sitting on a curb before walking to a nearby ambulance. A yellow tarp covered a body on the dock.
Eleven Vessels, Divers and Helicopters Deployed
“We are still conducting an active search of the area,” said Crispen. “We have 11 vessels on the water conducting that search.” Divers were sent into the water, and helicopters dispatched overhead to scour the bay, even as white caps on the water presented challenging conditions for the rescue teams.
The Coast Guard and Oakland police also helped in the rescue effort. Crispen said crews were searching areas where survivors in the water would tend to drift given tidal and current patterns. “Our standard operating procedure is to continue to search as long as it’s safe enough for us to search,” he said. “This search will go on for some time.”
San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie called the ongoing operation an “all-hands-on-deck” search and rescue mission, speaking at the scene alongside the fire chief as the sun began dropping over the bay and questions mounted about what caused a large, multi-deck recreational vessel to capsize so quickly in an area popular with recreational boaters.
Waters That Once Made Alcatraz Inescapable
Alcatraz Island, once a federal prison infamously inescapable due to the strong ocean currents and cold Pacific waters that surround it, is now a tourist destination. It is located in San Francisco Bay about a mile north of the city’s shoreline, in an often windy area that attracts sailboats and other recreational vessels.
The same features that made Alcatraz so notoriously difficult to escape from — frigid water temperatures averaging between 50 and 55 degrees Fahrenheit, swift tidal currents that can run at three to four knots, and persistent Bay winds — make any capsizing in the vicinity a life-threatening emergency within minutes. Hypothermia can incapacitate an adult swimmer in the bay in as little as fifteen to thirty minutes under typical summer conditions, a physiological reality that lends urgency to every passing hour of the search for the two people still missing.
The cause of the capsizing was not immediately determined. The US Coast Guard is expected to open a formal marine casualty investigation once the immediate search-and-rescue operation concludes, which is standard procedure following any maritime incident resulting in loss of life in US navigable waters.
As nightfall approached Tuesday, the search entered its most difficult phase, with crews working under floodlights and aided by thermal imaging equipment aboard the helicopters still circling the bay. For the families of the two missing adults, and for the community that watched the scene unfold in real time on local television, the answer to whether anyone else survived the sinking in those cold, fast-moving waters remained agonizingly open.
