Torian Topel woke to popping and crackling noises just before 2 a.m. Oct. 25.

Through the crack in her room-darkening curtains in the bedroom of her houseboat, docked on the Mississippi River in St. Paul Park, she could see an orange glow, she said. “I didn’t look at the clock, but I could feel that it wasn’t morning, and it wasn’t day,” she said.

A photo taken on Oct. 29, 2024, of a houseboat belonging to Nick Walsh. Walsh, 38, of St. Paul Park, died in a houseboat fire on Oct. 25, 2024. (Courtesy of Torian Topel)

When she opened the curtains, she saw her boyfriend’s houseboat, docked in the next slip, fully engulfed in flames. “There were flames shooting out his windows,” Topel said. “The entire boat was just completely on fire.”

With only a 3-foot dock separating the houseboats, Topel knew she had to act quickly. She screamed for her two sons, Nick, 21, and Greyson, 12, to grab the family pets and get off the boat.

“The windows blew in either from the sheer heat, or the fire had transferred to my boat,” she said. “It was, like, ‘We need to get out now.’ I didn’t grab anything except my cellphone. I didn’t grab my purse. I didn’t grab my car keys. My oldest didn’t grab his wallet. They actually went off barefoot. I happened to slip on shoes out of habit, so I had shoes on.”

Topel said she screamed for her boyfriend, Nick Walsh, who had been at a bowling league earlier that night, as she scrambled to escape. Nick’s dog, an English Springer spaniel named Fiadh, remained on board Topel’s boat.

Walsh, 38, died in the fire. The cause of the fire remains under investigation, said St. Paul Park Fire Chief Mike Kramer.

Topel, 41, a veterinary technician, and her two sons are staying with her sister in Elk River as they figure out their next steps. She said she is still trying to come to terms with Walsh’s death.

“I could have sworn I saw Nick squatting in front of his boat,” Topel said. “I really thought he was OK. He was worried about Fiadh, and he said to me, ‘She’s not going to follow you. You have to go get her.’ I’m looking at my boat. I know I’ve got a propane tank on the front of my boat, and I’m envisioning that blowing up, and I’m seeing flames on my boat.”

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Knowing that it wasn’t safe to walk inside the boat, Topel said she took the outside walkway to the back of her boat and was able to punch in some Styrofoam that had been placed above a window air conditioner and call for Fiadh.

“She came up quick, but she refused to follow me, and she’s, like, 43 pounds,” Topel said. “She’s actually pregnant, too, so I can’t pick her up and carry her down this narrow walkway, so I made the judgment call and pushed her into the river.”

When Topel reached shore, she and sons scrambled up a rocky, wooded hill to the boatyard, and she called 911. “We went to the area where I thought Nick was going to be meeting us – at the top of the steps,” she said. “I asked Tim, who’s another live-aboard resident, where Nick was, and Tim said, ‘He’s not here.’ I said, ‘What do you mean?’”

Jack-of-all-trades

Walsh and Topel, who met through the dating app Bumble, had been dating for just over a year. On their first date, in September 2023, they went hiking in the Sherburne National Wildlife Refuge in Zimmerman, she said.

Torian Topel and Nick Walsh pose for a photo while canoeing in the Mississippi River on March 2, 2024. Walsh, 38, of St. Paul Park, died in a houseboat fire on Oct. 25, 2024. (Courtesy of Torian Topel)

Walsh, who had been married previously, had three children. “He loved people, and he loved God,” Topel said. “His kids were so important to him. We did so much together in such a short period of time. I feel like I have known him for years.”

Walsh, who sold life insurance, grew up in Rosemount and got his bachelor’s degree in business administration from Rocky Mountain College in Billings, Mont. In addition to selling insurance, he worked in construction and did tree work, she said.

“He was a jack-of-all-trades,” she said. “He was a great cook. He played the banjo. He spoke Spanish and a little bit of Gaelic. There was almost absolutely nothing that he couldn’t do. If he didn’t know something, he would look it up and learn it.”

The two shared a love of animals. In addition to Fiadh, Walsh owned five snakes, a turtle and a couple of lizards, she said. “We had a lot of similar qualities,” she said. “He was very much an extrovert, and I’m very much an introvert. He helped me to get outside of my comfort zone.”

Lost home to previous fire

Topel bought her houseboat in March and fixed it up. She and Nick and Greyson moved in mid-May. “After I had it fixed up, I named it, ‘The Holey Hull, I Hope it Floats,’” she said.

The Topels previously lived in Zimmerman, but their rental home burned down on Mother’s Day weekend in 2019, and they lost everything, she said. She had rental insurance, but she had moved before the fire and forgot to change the address, so barely anything was covered, she said.

Sadly, insurance will not cover anything lost on the houseboat, either, she said.

Friends and family members have started an online fundraising page to help the Topels.

“The fire destroyed everything Torian owned,” the post on GoFundMe reads. “Nothing on her houseboat could be saved. This loss is even more heartbreaking considering that just five years ago, Torian also lost her home in a fire and had to start over. Now, she’s once again faced with the overwhelming task of rebuilding her life from scratch.”

As of Friday, the fund had raised more than $1,000.

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Topel, who must get a new apartment, replace basic necessities and pay her bills, said she is grateful for any assistance.

On top of everything else, Topel said she is on the hook for removing her burned 50-foot houseboat. “That’s probably going to be over $12,000, even though it wasn’t my boat that started on fire,” she said.

She is mourning the loss of Walsh and the dreams they shared.

“He had always wanted to live on a houseboat,” she said. “He had once shared a 10-year plan from way back in the day. He made it happen. When his kids graduated, he wanted to buy a catamaran and sail the world. That would have been our future together.”