RESIDENTS were evacuated as fire crews worked to tackle a blaze on a marina boat.

Essex County Fire and Rescue crews from Tillingham and Burnham rushed to the scene in The Esplanade, Mayland, on Wednesday evening shortly before 8pm.

The call came following reports of a boat on fire in the area.

Crews evacuated people nearby before getting to work inside the boat wearing breathing apparatus.

They tackled the flames for more than an hour, finally extinguishing it by 9.12pm.

Watch manager John Maddocks from the Tillingham Fire Station said: "Thank you to the callers for their quick thinking to try to contain the fire.

"Luckily the boat yard has an old fire appliance for washing down the jetties and ramps. 

"Firefighters did well to manage the risk to the public and themselves.

"We’d like to thank our coastguard colleagues who turned up to support with their mud rescue equipment to support our teams in case they were needed.

“We’d also like to praise our control room for their quick work in mapping us to the area as it was quite remote and the caller didn’t have many details of where it was."

Mr Maddocks also urged residents to download the what3words app for future situations which may arise.

What3words is a special system designed to identify any location on the surface of Earth with a resolution of about three metres.

The system encodes geographic coordinates into three permanently fixed dictionary words.

“We’d recommend everyone downloads what3words, it’s a free app which helps to pinpoint your location," Mr Maddocks said.

"It can be really handy if you’re in a remote area to help emergency services get to you as quickly as possible.”

Essex County Fire and Rescue Service said crews believe the fire was caused accidentally when works were being carried out on the boat earlier in the day.