The ferry that serves Bois Blanc Island, or better known as Boblo Island, went out of service again Tuesday night, leaving island residents stranded on the mainland.
Amico Properties is owner and developer of the island, and owns and operates the Amherstburg Ferry Company.
Amherstburg Mayor Michael Prue, an island resident himself, says after Tuesday night's council meeting, he was unable to get back home.
He says he showed up to the dock around 9:45 p.m., and had learned it had gone out of service shortly after 8 p.m.
"When I got there they said it would take a few hours, so I just curled up in my car and fell asleep for a bit, woke up four or five times during the night to turn the car on because it was cold, and waited until 6:35 a.m., they knocked on my window and said 'we'll take you now'," said Prue. "So I spent my night on the streets."
Prue says he wasn't the only one affected.
"A couple of cars were there before me, probably some as early as 8:30 p.m., and there was two or three cars after me that were in the line at 6:30 a.m., so maybe a dozen people spent the night in their car, or a dozen cars, might be more than a dozen people, some had two or three people in them," Prue said.
Prue says the ferry company sends out emails as a way of communicating outages or downtime.
In March, the Town of Amherstburg served Amico notice, stating the company was failing to meet its legal obligations to the town as it currently does not have a working backup ferry service, raising safety concerns on the island with the town potentially not being able to respond to fire, ambulance or police matters.
As a condition of development of Boblo Island, the town said it secured two specific legal commitments to protect the interests of the community.
Prue says the town heard back from Amico, but owner Dominic Amicone raised more questions.
Prue said that he planned to meet with the town CAO on Wednesday afternoon to determine if they needed to engage their legal counsel.
"The only solution for this island, and the people who live on it, and for [Amicone's] future home sales, because nobody's going to buy anything while this is going on, is to have a second ferry," Prue said. "If he had a second ferry, and the thing went down at 8:30 p.m., he could have pulled it into the adjacent dock, put up the other ferry and ran all night."
A spokesperson for Amico confirmed to AM800 News that the ferry is back up and running, and was down for overnight maintenance.