INVESTIGATIONS are still being carried out into the cause of a fire on a boat in Oxford on Saturday.
A man living on a boat nearby rescued two people from the burning boat near Osney Bridge at 3.30am. A third person also escaped.
Police yesterday said it was an accidental fire and was not being treated as suspicious.
Oxfordshire Fire and Rescue Service are still working to determine the cause of the blaze, captured by reader Jamie Pearce in the photograph above.
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John Simmonds, 34, who has Asperger’s syndrome, said he did not like touching people, but overcame his condition to rescue two people who had jumped from the boat into the river.
The computer programmer was woken by loud banging before he ran along the bank, waking up fellow boaters. Mr Simmonds ran to the flaming boat and hauled those inside to safety. He told the Oxford Mail: “The adrenaline probably helped.”
The fire burned through the boat’s mooring ropes and it drifted towards the bridge and back to its moorings as flames engulfed the roof.
Two men and a woman were treated at the scene by firefighters and paramedics for smoke inhalation and taken to Oxford’s John Radcliffe Hospital.
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