A boat explosion Friday evening on popular Lake Lanier in Georgia left at least five people injured, officials said.
Fire crews responded to reports of a boat explosion at about 7 p.m. ET to find a boat ablaze with 5-foot-high flames and five people injured at the scene, Hall County Fire Rescue said in a news release.
Cell phone video showed black smoke and heavy flames billowing into the air from the boat, as boaters from several other nearby vessels looked on.
Four of the patients were taken by ambulance to area hospitals, and the fifth was airlifted, the fire department said, adding that all patients were in stable condition as they were transported from the scene. Their exact conditions were not confirmed.
The fire was extinguished using a portable water pump with the help of a Gainesville Fire Department rescue boat, Hall County Fire Rescue said. It has since been towed to shore.
The cause of the fire is under investigation, the fire department said. The circumstances that led up to the explosion were still unclear.
Lake Lanier is located about 50 miles northeast of Atlanta. It is the largest lake in Georgia with a nearly 700-mile shoreline, and is one of the busiest lakes in the Southeast.
Heading into the July Fourth weekend, local law enforcement told CBS News they were upping patrols on the lake, specifically monitoring for impaired boating.
“We have to pay attention to what’s going on around us all the time, even more so because of the dangers that come with not having any more officers,” Sgt. Drew Long with the Forsyth County Sheriff’s Office told CBS News earlier this week.
contributed to this report.
Faris Tanyos is a news editor for CBSNews.com, where he writes and edits stories and tracks breaking news. He previously worked as a digital news producer at several local news stations up and down the West Coast.
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