One person was killed and two others were missing Tuesday after a pontoon boat sank about 600 yards from Alcatraz Island, leaving 16 people rescued from the water and a search-and-rescue effort still underway in San Francisco Bay. The vessel carried 19 people when it went down.
Of the 16 rescued, 13 were safe on shore by Tuesday, and three were taken to a San Francisco hospital for treatment. Live video from the scene showed a man and a woman wrapped in blankets and sitting near an ambulance, a stark sign of how quickly the incident moved from open water to emergency response.
The scale of the response matched the scale of the problem. The US coast guard said search-and-rescue efforts were ongoing Tuesday afternoon, while KTVU Fox 2 captured video of a red boat partially submerged in the water near the island, which is one of San Francisco’s best-known tourist attractions and draws millions of visitors a year.
There was also a question in the first accounts of what had happened aboard the vessel. Initial reports pointed to a fire, but San Francisco fire chief Dean Crispen said there was no indication of a blaze. Lt Mariano Elias described it as a pontoon pleasure boat, leaving the cause of the sinking unresolved even as crews continued to look for the two missing people.
That unanswered question now sits at the center of the story. One person is dead, two remain missing, and the water near Alcatraz has already yielded a rescue operation that is still not finished.
