time of year we’re usually fighting mud, not fires.”
Even though Darius was relatively new to Lost Harbor, he knew the pattern. The most intense time for firefighting was the summer, when massive brushfires could develop in the wilderness. Sometimes they encroached on the settled areas, in which case it was all hands onboard to set fire lines and backfires.
Here in town, structure fires just didn’t happen all that often—because there weren’t many structures. Emergency medical calls took up the bulk of their time.
But this was the eighth time in the last couple weeks that a random fire had broken out. A shed behind the feed store had caught fire. A burn barrel at an empty homestead had been knocked over and sparked a small brushfire. And now an abandoned houseboat was burning.
Darius glanced over at Nate, who’d grown up here and knew the territory inside and out. “What do you think, Nate?”
“You know what they say. Strange things happen around Lost Souls Wilderness.”
All the others said the last words along with Nate, while Darius rolled his eyes. He’d only heard that saying about a hundred times since moving here. It seemed to be a point of pride with the locals, but he preferred a more reality-based approach.
“How about we see what’s going on with this fire before we speculate,” he ordered the crew.
And that put an end to that.
The fire had broken out at one of those quirky Lost Harbor locations that didn’t fit a conventional location marker. On the long, narrow arm of land that led to the harbor, there was a stretch of marshy mud flats where a series of old boats had been abandoned over the years. Ancient fishing boats and dinghies rotted away into the mud. Some of them still belonged to people, some didn’t. One old fishing vessel occasionally flew a pirate flag.
They found the houseboat fully engulfed in flames, spewing thick black smoke into the air. A haphazard pile of old rowboats and skiffs and ropes and other gear extended from the houseboat all the way to an RV park. Someone should have cleaned up that mess years ago.
At the other end of the trail of junk was the office building that serviced the RV park. Restrooms, a gas pump, a small convenience store. The houseboat was a goner, but they had to protect those structures.
Darius issued swift orders to hose down the debris closest to the houseboat and clear the area adjacent to the RV park. He helped Nate haul the three-inch hose to the jumbled junk pile of marine detritus. He held the hose in place while Nate went to turn on the flow.
Unlike every previous place he’d worked, the tiny town of Lost Harbor didn’t have many fire hydrants. Engine 1 was equipped with a seven-hundred-and-fifty pound water tank. If that wasn’t enough, sometimes they had to find other sources of suppressant—ocean water would work in this instance. Just one of the ways in which firefighting in a remote location was new and different.
As he saturated the weathered old dinghies and buoys and broken crab traps, he kept an eye on the blazing bonfire that had been a houseboat. The wind was blowing the smoke toward the bay, creating a trail of dark swirls that wafted into the sky.
Why would anyone want to torch that old thing? Had someone set this fire? At first glance, he saw no other reason why it would have caught fire. Nothing electrical, nothing chemical, nothing weather-related.
It probably wasn’t insurance-related. There was no way an insurance company would cover this old hulk. None of it made any sense, but then again, at this point, he just needed to make sure the damn fire didn’t spread. After that, he and Nate would come in and look for signs of an accelerant or anything else that would indicate arson.
Along the road out to the boardwalk, cars slowed to watch them work, and a few people took photos out their windows. The fire made a spectacular sight against the backdrop of silver mudflats and snowcapped peaks.
This was a piece of Lost Harbor going up in flames; it had once been someone’s home. Maybe a newlywed couple or a retired couple looking for peace and adventure.
Sad, when he thought of it that way. Romantic dreams gone up in smoke; he knew how that went.
“Who owns this thing?” he asked Nate as they watched the sparks swirl across the mud.
“The houseboat? The story goes that a smuggler bought it as a