It’s been nearly a month since Torian Topel woke up on her houseboat in the middle of the night to find her boyfriend’s houseboat, which was next door, on fire. The flames ended up taking both of their homes, and her boyfriend, Nick Walsh, died.

The mangled metal remains of the two former homes sat side-by-side in the boatyard at Hidden Harbor Marina in St. Paul Park on Tuesday, just as they once did on the Mississippi River.

Topel and her two children moved into their houseboat she refurbished herself in June to live next to Walsh, 38, who had been living there for several years, she said.

They lived side-by-side for a few blissful months.

“It was beautiful. First of all, you go out into the evening, and you can actually see the stars,” Topel described. “It was great, because it’s like, that was an opportunity for me to own my own home. I could garden all I wanted.”

Then, on Oct. 25, around 2 a.m., Topel and her kids awoke to a fire next door.

“I could see kind of an orange glow coming from the cracks of the curtains. As I’m reaching up to open them to see what’s going on, I’m recognizing that sound of fire, you know, where you’re looking at, like a fire pit or something crackling,” Topel recalled.

“So I opened the curtain, and I saw my boyfriend’s boat fully engulfed in flames.”

Given their close proximity, she figured her home would soon catch fire too, so she rushed her two sons and her dog out, and she managed to save Walsh’s more hesitant dog, who had been staying on her boat too.

“There’s like a hill to the boatyard, and we climbed up. Of course, my kids were complaining because they didn’t have shoes on and walking on, like concrete and rocks and things,” Topel said.

“And it’s like, I don’t care, we need to go because all I’m thinking about is these propane tanks that I’ve got on my boat exploding.”

Topel said she yelled out for Walsh but was unable to access his boat. Knowing he came home late that night, she expected she would find him at a safe point, she said. He never showed up or answered his phone.

“Then it was the next morning when we were notified that they had found a body on his boat,” Topel shared, her voice beginning to quake. “I mean, like, there’s not a moment in my mind when I’m not thinking about him. It’s like, I have to be there for my kids.”

Topel described her boyfriend as a loving, lively outdoorsman and a man of strong faith. Walsh and Topel had a good relationship with his ex-wife, and their kids all were close.

“I don’t think anybody is going to forget him, and those who didn’t know him, you know, are missing out,” she said.

Topel and her children have been staying with family in the metro as she works to rebuild and find an apartment after losing everything but the clothes on their back in the fire.

Family members set up a GoFundMe to help Topel with that effort and the cost of removing the burned boats from the marina. Insurance has not covered any of those expenses, she said.