Nearly 30 people were forced to jump off their tour boat in the middle of the night into shark-infested waters in the Galapagos Islands after a fire broke out on board, in a terrifying ordeal that was caught on camera.
Last week, 16 vacationers and 11 crew members who were on an eight-day cruise through the Latin American islands were forced to grab life jackets and jump overboard when their boat filled with smoke.
Lisa Bartley, from Los Angeles ABC Station KABC, was on board and immediately started filming as the chaos broke out.
“All hell broke loose, smoke filled the boat, they told us there was a fire in the engine,” Bartley told “Good Morning America.”
Barely able to breathe, the passengers were left with no option but to evacuate, even though they had seen sharks in the water earlier that day, according to Bartley.
Dana Kirk, one of the passengers, said that she had to “jump off from the back of the boat.”
Once in the water, they said their two life rafts would not deploy at first.
Kirk described the relief when the rafts finally did deploy.
“Once we got in the life raft I knew we were going to be safe,” she said.
Despite the panic, Bartley said, “The crew was so amazing.”
“One of them actually took off his sweatshirt and gave it to Dana and some of the other girls who were cold,” she added.
After two and a half hours on the rafts, they said a ship finally answered their SOS message and took them on board.
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