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SCOTTSBORO, Ala. (AP) — An Alabama county plans to reopen the park where a deadly fire at a marina killed eight people.
Most of Jackson County Park at Scottsboro will reopen Monday, officials said, but the part of the marina where fire occurred will still be off-limits.
Paul Smith, the county emergency management director, said crews would be cleaning up the site through the weekend. Environmental damage from the blaze didn't get outside the immediate area around the marina, he told a news conference Friday.
A fire broke out on a dock at the marina Jan. 27, destroying about three dozen boats and claiming eight lives. Officials have not determined the cause of the fire, but they said investigators are looking at one boat in particular.
Most burned boats that sunk in the wide creek where the marina is located off the Tennessee River have been removed, Smith said, but numerous boats that sunk where they were moored at dock slips remain. Salvage work will take “quite a while,” he said.
Multiple people lived in boats tied to the dock where the fire occurred. The dead included six members of one family.
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