A Westport Island couple spent Thursday night at a Bath hotel after fire destroyed their home on North End Road, Westport Fire Chief Bob Mooney said at the scene Friday morning.

No one was home and no one was hurt in the hours-long firefighting effort with firefighters from Westport, Wiscasset, Edgecomb, Boothbay, Woolwich, Alna, Dresden and Newcastle, Mooney said.

The home’s owners, Stan Lane and Norma Dreyfus were in Boston Thursday. Thankfully, their dog was at a private kennel, Mooney said.

“Otherwise the dog would have been gone,” the chief said, looking at the scene.

Mooney and fellow firefighters returned Friday in response to an approximately 6 a.m. report of a rekindle. Firefighters dug for hot spots and put water on the smoking remains of the structure. It was a one and a half story, wood-framed house and an attached garage housing a new Subaru wagon that the fire also claimed, Mooney said.

The home was gorgeous and it was insured, Mooney said. He was the first firefighter on scene and the house was fully involved in the fire, he said.

Lane is on the fire department’s board of directors and is on the First Responders team, according to Mooney. Asked if it is harder from a personal standpoint when working on a fire that strikes a member’s home, Mooney said, “It adds to it.”

A 600-foot fire hose remained unrolled along the driveway Friday morning, left there from the night before in case of a rekindle, Mooney said. Friday morning’s was not big enough to need the hose, he said. The rekindle did not surprise him due to the fire’s severity.

Putting out hot spots is brutal work, Mooney said. “All we can do is flood it and dig out what we can.”

Later Friday morning, Mooney met with a representative of the State Fire Marshal’s Office. The fire remained under investigation but there was nothing suspicious, Mooney said.

“The smart money is on a lightning strike,” he said. Storms hit the region Wednesday night into Thursday morning. Most of the storms passed to the north. “But a few came right over us,” said Mooney, who lives nearby.

Lane’s and Dreyfus’ home had a 24-hour alarm system but Lincoln County Communications received no report of it going off, so either a direct lightning strike or one nearby may have taken out the home’s electrical system and started a fire in a wall or walls, and then continued building for hours, Mooney said.

A neighbor spotted the fire mid-Thursday afternoon, Mooney said. The same man had smelled smoke earlier in the day but saw nothing and then when he returned from a trip to Bath he saw the fire and reported it, Mooney said.

In addition to the area fire departments, Wiscasset Ambulance Service also responded, Mooney said.

The response from area departments was great, he said. “One town can’t do this without mutual aid these days.”