RedactedNarrative: Pope County, Illinois 911 center received a call around approximately 9:00PM CT from subject stating his boat had caught on fire while out on the river. The call was then re-routed to Livingston County Dispatch in Smithland, KY and re-routed again to KSP Post 1 in Mayfield, KY. I was contacted at exactly 9:31PM by dispatchers from Post 1 and made aware of the incident. I was given the telephone number for Operator and I immediately called him for more information. 
  	Once on the line, Operator stated that while on the Ohio River in the vicinity of Rondeau Island, his 18' Crownline runabout caught on fire from within the engine compartment. He then beached the boat on the island and moved to safety. A man picked him up and took him back to shore. According to Operator, there were no other occupants in the boat and nobody was injured. He also stated that once he was back on shore around dark, he could see a large column of black smoke rising from the other side of the island from the vicinity of his boat. At the end of our initial phone conversation, I told Operator that I would be on the Ohio River the following morning with another officer for routine patrol and that we would try to locate what was left of his boat. 
  	Officer and myself launched our boat the following morning (7/24) and traveled several miles upstream to the area of Rondeau Island around 7:45AM to try and locate the scene of the accident. We circumnavigated the island one time and although we could smell the remnants of something that had been burnt, we were unsuccessful locating the boat. I called Operator back for the second time that morning to try and get a better understanding of where he had beached his boat. He stated the location we were looking for was on the KY side of the island and would be closer toward the upstream end. He also stated that while trying to evade the flames, he had poorly beached the vessel and had not tied the boat up. On our second pass around the island, we located a place matching Operator' description and noticed a considerable amount of burnt vegetation as well as what appeared to be remnants of a plastic or rubber bumper pad from a boat. Because our patrol boat was not equipped with down-scan or side-scan imagery technology, we were unable to look below the water's surface for clues of a submerged boat. We never found Operator' 18' Crownline runabout.