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Knoxtnhorn

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‘God woke us up and got us off that boat’: The story behind Saturday’s fire in the Vol Navy

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By David Ubben Sep 3, 2019comment-icon@2x.png 20 save-icon@2x.png

Jeffrey Roth was standing on a dock, watching his boat simultaneously burn and sink. One of Knoxville’s fire captains stood next to him and noticed something.

“You know, you’re amazingly calm to be watching your boat go up in flames,” he said.

Roth chuckled.

“Listen, my friends got off the boat, I got off the boat, my dog got off the boat and nobody else got hurt. I haven’t lost a thing today. And I’ve had worse days,” Roth told the fire captain.

Still, Saturday wasn’t a good one. His 42-foot yacht named Chances “R” caught fire on Saturday morning, spawning immediate jokes about a bad omen for Tennessee’s season, which only intensified when Tennessee suffered a shocking upset to Georgia State hours later.

Roth, a 1988 University of Tennessee alumnus who now works as vice president of a steel company that helped build the university’s student union and Haslam School of Business, didn’t get to watch the game, but word of the loss spread quickly.

“It didn’t make us feel any better,” he said, letting out a lengthy belly laugh.

He can laugh because it’s just football and a boat.

“I lost my wife a year and a half ago to cancer,” Roth said. “So after doing that and holding her hand as she took her last breath, losing stuff just was not a big deal.”

Before Saturday, Roth had never captained a ship in the Vol Navy. The Knoxville resident purchased the yacht in March and crafted plans to do so in the Tennessee River for the Vols’ 2019 season opener.

He and his girlfriend, who lives in Chattanooga, arrived on campus a little after 4 p.m. on Friday. They had planned to meet up with friends, but for the first game, they wanted to make sure to grab a spot on the dock, rather than tie their boat up to another boat and be further from shore. That would require any friends who came on Saturday to walk across strangers’ boats just to reach them.

On Friday afternoon, they secured a coveted spot right next to the dock and welcomed another couple of friends to spend the night on Chances “R” before the season began. Joining them was Oreo, Roth’s Jack Russell terrier.

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Jeffrey Roth (right) and his boat on Friday night. (Courtesy of Jeffrey Roth)

Around 6 a.m. Saturday morning, Roth’s girlfriend woke up and smelled smoke. Roth didn’t smell any, but he noticed the generator had shut off.

“I thought, ‘Well, that’s weird.’ I tried to restart it, but it wouldn’t start,” Roth said. “I thought, ‘Well, there’s probably something wrong with it. I’ll deal with that when we actually get up.’ ”

His girlfriend went to open the back door of the boat and let some air into the cabin to get rid of the smoke smell when she noticed the source.

“She opened the door and said, ‘The boat’s on fire,’” Roth said.

Giant plumes of smoke were billowing out of the engine well at the rear of the boat. Roth opened up the engine hatch and saw the flames immediately. He grabbed the fire extinguisher inside the boat and went to work.

“Of course, that didn’t do anything,” he said. “And then flames just rolled out from there.”

He had to make a quick decision.

“I said, ‘It’s time to abandon ship.’ I yelled at my friends who were sleeping on the boat,” Roth said.

They all put on a pair of shorts and abandoned the vessel, but a then-shirtless Roth quickly came to a sobering realization: Oreo was still on the boat. The flames were still growing, but Roth ran back on the boat and grabbed his dog before returning to the dock. Thirty seconds later, the entire rear of the boat was engulfed in flames.

“I could have gone through the walk-through windshield in the front if I’d had to, but it didn’t take long to get out of hand. When diesel fuel and fiberglass get ignited, obviously, it’s hard to put out,” he said. “I don’t know how I’d describe it, I’d just tell you God woke us up and got us off that boat.”

A fellow member of the Vol Navy eventually gave Roth a shirt. One of Tennessee’s rowing coaches arrived later that morning with flip flops for Roth and his friends, since they’d abandoned ship without time to put on shoes. Others invited them onto their boats to get out of the heat and offered them something to eat and drink.

Roth’s calamity grew from an internet punchline throughout the day to a real, meaningful bad omen after the game’s disastrous result. The Vols lost as 26-point favorites, dropping their home opener for the first time since 1983.

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The aftermath. (Courtesy of Jeffrey Roth)

Roth didn’t see a second of the game. He was busy dealing with the police and fire departments and the insurance company.

“We had to stay at the dock and sign every document under the sun. The police, the firemen, the cleanup crews,” he said. “We spent the whole day there.”

Crews arrived and pulled the boat out from being partially submerged under water, eventually towing it away from the dock.

Roth didn’t return to his home until 8:30 p.m. Saturday and spent the rest of the weekend enjoying his time off and counting his blessings.

The damage to the dock was minor, and the only other damage was a few gelcoat blisters to the boat on the opposite side of the dock from theirs.

Roth’s son and a friend joined him at his home Sunday night for a cookout, and they spent Monday afternoon lounging around the pool, relishing life and a day off from work.

“We were worn out,” he said. “Just a miracle. We’re living proof there’s angels among us.”

 

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