Daring rescue from yacht fire on Huangpu River

A fire broke out on a yacht on the Huangpu River on Saturday evening, but no one was injured.

Security guards on duty at the Shanghai Port International Cruise Terminal spotted smoke from the deck engine room of a yacht that was cruising alongside at 7:10pm, and alerted the captain.

However, control of the yacht was lost after 10 minutes and it drifted to a dock near Gaoyang Road. As it was drifting down the river, it bumped into another yacht igniting a fire, and scratched a third

Fire authorities received an emergency report at 7:09pm and rushed to the scene.

Meanwhile, an officer on a marine police patrol boat had also noticed smoke from the yacht and accelerated towards it. Police headquarters contacted him and ordered him to join the rescue.

"When we approached the yacht, fire had broken out with heavy black smoke in the air," said Lu Jingjun, the police officer on the boat. "People on the yacht had their life jackets on and looked very anxious."

Together with the police assistants on the boat, Lu saved nine people from the boat and two others from the river.

"A middle-aged man threw a mooring rope to us, which was very important because this enabled us to be attached to the yacht which was about 1.8 meters upstream to us," he recalled.

A girl was taken from the yacht to the police boat first, with women, elderly people and men saved in turn, Lu said.

All 11 people boarded the police boat within 10 minutes.

Lu contacted medical services to meet them at the police dock at Jinling Road E.

"I was having butterflies in my stomach during the rescue, but I kept reminding myself that it was my duty to keep people safe," he said.

The fire was extinguished at 8:40pm on Saturday. The cause is under investigation.