Fire gutted a man?s $30,000 boat and blacked out a neighbourhood last night.

Andr? Hassell, of Darrell?s Oval, near John Smith?s Bay, had been testing the engine on his 25ft boat when it went up in flames.

?I was just going to launch it tomorrow or Monday and it backfired ? it caught the fumes of the gas I guess and it went from there.

?I couldn?t stop it. It just kept burning.?

Mr. Hassell battled in vain to extinguish the blaze that melted the electric and cable lines above the boat. ?I tried water. Then I got a wet towel and threw it on there, and sand, but there wasn?t much sand around here, and afterwards it just got too high.

?So, I decided to stand on the side and wait for the fire trucks because it?s a gas engine and I was worried about it blowing.?

The exterior of his shed also caught on fire, but inside there was only smoke damage.

Bermuda Fire Service media relations officer Lt. Dana Lovell said the fire was reported at 6.56 p.m. Firefighters arrived at the scene at 7.09 p.m. They used foam to extinguish the blaze and later the booster reel to cool down the smouldering boat.

Nearby relatives and neighbours said they heard several loud bangs and the next thing they saw was flames and dark grey smoke.

Neighbour Trina Riley said she did not see it start, but she heard the bang before she ran out of her house.

?It was like a pop, pop and then all I heard was ?no? and that is when I ran out of the house to see what the chaos was,? said Ms Riley.

?So, I just saw the sky filled with blackness and the neighbours were saying it was the shed, but as I got closer they said it was the boat.?

She added that she thought it was the electric transistors because they had been having trouble with them this week.

?I didn?t think it was all of this,? she said, ?I was telling her (Lynndell Lovell) how lucky we were, because the sky was just grey.?

Ms Lovell another neighbour said: ?The fire was reaching the lines and it scorched them.?

The Bermuda Electric Light Company (Belco) and Cable Vision were on the scene attempting to repair the lines.

Mr. Hassell?s niece Scenttia Jones said this was the second time the boat had caught fire.

?The first time was when we were out fishing last year.

?Now it was not quite to this extent, but the boat had caught on fire when we were out in the middle of the ocean. And he couldn?t really work the extinguisher in the heat of the moment ? so my daddy was there and he pulled it out and he was able to extinguish the fire.?

Before the boat caught fire, Miss Jones had just rode into her yard with a friend and was retelling the story of last summer?s blaze when they heard two low bangs and a loud one.

?As soon as I said that I heard pat, pat, pat, pat, pat and he was trying to start it so I came and told my daddy (Dexter Jones) that the boat was sparking up,? she said. ?And then I heard a big pat and then that was the first big explosion. There were a couple of others. He has been working on the boat consistently for the last two ? three months, so to see it go up is hard and it is better to happen here then for it to happen out on the ocean.?