A small cabin in the woods located in the southeast portion of Vashon burned last week, according to Vashon Island Fire & Rescue Assistant Chief Bob Larsen.

A brush fire was reported to the fire department last Thursday morning in the area of 125th Place and 124th Lane, near Neill Point. While firefighters were on the way there, explosions were also reported in the vicinity. Larsen said they arrived in the area and searched for a fire, but could not find one. What’s more, fire in that area had been reported to the department repeatedly in recent weeks. Firefighters had investigated, but had never been able to find anything, Larsen said.

Last Thursday afternoon, after Larsen had returned to the station from the reported brush fire call, he received a report that a boater had spotted a smoldering area where a cabin had burned. Larsen and three other firefighters then headed back to the area and walked in from the beach, up a vertical stretch and about 400 feet in to the trees.

Finally, he said, they found an area approximately 200 feet square where the small cabin had burned and several other spot fires were burning.

“It’s probably been a smoldering fire for two to three weeks,” Larsen said on Friday. “It’s what we have been looking for. It evidently reached the cabin yesterday morning.”

The explosion reported last Thursday was related to the fire; a propane container exploded in the flames. There is no water or electricity in the area, Larsen added, so putting out the fire in the shrubs, stumps and fallen trees required all handwork.

On Friday morning, Larsen and another crew returned to the area — about a half-mile from the road and the nearest neighbor — to finish digging up everything that was burning. He added that the area could smoulder for weeks, weather permitting — and that this was an unusual experience.

“You could see it better from a distance than up close yesterday. We did not see it until we were right on top of it,” he said. “We have had a hard time finding fires before, but not this much trouble.”

The cause of the fire is not known.

In other Vashon fire news, Vashon Island Fire & Rescue sent three firefighters to California to assist with the firefighting effort there. On Friday, Brett Kranjcevich, Tony Puz and Darren Lenz — in one of the district’s fire engines — boarded an early morning ferry and headed south to help fight the fires in Northern California. Kranjcevich is the district’s mechanic, as well as a volunteer assistant chief and firefighter; Puz is a volunteer with the district, and Lenz is a career firefighter with the district, who was hired earlier this year.

At VIFR, Chief Charlie Krimmert noted that the department will be reimbursed by the State of California to cover the cost of replacing Lenz on his Vashon shifts and for the use of the engine. In fact, he said, the district often makes a profit on deployments such as this. Beyond economics, he noted that those involved will learn a great deal and bring it home with them. And he added, “That’s our job — to help.”

The men are on an 18-day deployment, according to a report from the Seattle Fire Department. They are part of a deployment of 185 crew members and 50 fire engines from 45 departments across the state that are assisting with the effort to fight the fires.