Well, shit. A pair of plastic, portable toilets located in the far end of the “north 40” parking lot behind the Bayshore Mall mysteriously burned to the ground early Tuesday morning. The units were the closest restrooms to the Palco Marsh homeless encampment. 

According to Humboldt Bay Fire Chief Bill Gillespie, fire crews responded to a report of flaming porta potties sometime around 5:30 a.m. Tuesday. When they arrived the fire was nowhere to be seen, but neither were the toilets.

“They were just melted puddles of plastic and, unfortunately, fecal matter,” Gillespie said. 

The cause of the fire is undetermined — “no witnesses, no suspects,” according to Gillespie — and with all the evidence burned up, Humboldt Bay Fire really has no way of knowing for sure if the fire was set on purpose or was accidentally caused by, as Gillespie half-theorized, a lit cigarette thrown down the toilet.   

This is not the first restroom loss endured by Palco Marsh residents. The now-annihilated lavatories were purchased by the Humboldt Bay Harbor, Recreation and Conservation District back in January to allow Palco Marsh residents a restroom option that would have less of an impact on Humboldt Bay. According to a Times-Standard report, these newer porta-potties were bought to replace previous ones that had been vandalized and pushed over last summer. The decision to buy porta-potties came after the owners of the vandalized toilets refused to rent more units to the district.  

The latest units had been positioned on a concrete foundation and were reinforced in a way to make them more difficult to topple.  

“It’s unfortunate that the folks that are down there lost the opportunity to have restrooms,” Gillespie said. He encouraged anyone with information on how the toilets burned up to call Humboldt Bay Fire or the Eureka Police Department.