Freeport fire victims still in hospital

Boat owners -- some lucky, some not -- stopped at a Freeport marina Thursday morning to see the impact of a raging fire the day before that seriously injured two workers, destroyed 16 pleasure craft and damaged at least four others.

"It's gone. Not much left of it," Scott Mark, 48, of Freeport, said of his 34-foot Mainship cabin cruiser named Circus, which had been dry-docked at Approved Marine, 11 Hudson Ave.

Standing outside the marina Thursday, Mark said he had the boat for five years and it was insured. Still, he said, its cost, which he declined to reveal, made it irreplaceable.

Dennis Scalley, 61, also of Freeport, was happy to see his 34-foot Sea Ray sport boat unscathed. "It was not touched at all," he said.

The two injured workers, both 30 and from Roosevelt, remained in the burn unit at Nassau University Medical Center in East Meadow Thursday, a hospital spokeswoman said. They have not been identified publicly.

One worker was in satisfactory condition and the other was in critical but stable condition, hospital spokeswoman Shelley Lotenberg said.

A spokesman for the marina's owners, the Carman family, called the fire an "unfortunate incident."

Chris Squeri, the family spokesman and the executive director of the New York Marine Trades Association, said in a statement, "Our main concern is the health and well being of those two gentlemen."

He said Wednesday night that the marina owners were "very upset."

The two injured men were extracting a fuel tank from a boat that was in storage at the marina, police said. Believing the tank held no fuel, detectives said, the men began to cut it out from its position using a power saw. This caused sparks that ignited residual fuel and fumes, police said.

Freeport Fire Department Chief Mark Stuparich said Wednesday that about 200 firefighters from eight departments arrived shortly after the 3:44 p.m. alarm and fought the blaze for about two hours before it was extinguished.

"It's over a million dollars' loss is my guesstimate," Stuparich said. "It could have been a lot worse." Another 40 boats were nearby and were threatened, he said.

"This is going to be devastating to a lot of people," Stuparich said.

With William Murphy

and Gary Dymski