The Hat Island Fire Department is made up entirely of unpaid volunteers. Once a month, they gather on the Island to go through drills, do equipment checks, and eat a big lunch together. Those who don't live on the Island take a passenger ferry across the Sound for the day. Hat Island itself is only about a square mile in area, and about 40 people live on the island year round. Many more come over for the summer. The roads are unpaved, and many cars that remain on the island year round have been there for years, are without plates, or decked out like the one above. A reporter and myself took the ferry over with a group of firefighters for May's drill day, and our first call came minutes after getting off the ferry - a summer resident needed help lifting her dogs into the car she had parked at the ferry dock. It was a great day.
