The Holiday Farm Fire
Get Out! Now! A Firefighter’s Account of the Holiday Farm Fire of 2020
Part 6/12
We kept using our loudspeakers to announce: “Level 3 Evacuation of all residents. You must go now.”
After knocking on several doors, one of the officers flagged me down and asked, “Do you think it’s safe to assume no-one’s home if the gate is locked?”
I shook my head and said, “After the huge snowstorm we had, we told the community that they needed to leave markers by their gates to let us know that they were evacuated, but no one wanted to do it because they were afraid that thieves would see the markers and steal their things.
We warned them that if they don’t put a marker out, we will go through gates to check on them.”
One officer put his hands on his hips and stepped closer as he said, “Well, I don’t think that we should damage private property.”
Frustrated, I interrupted him and spoke slowly and loudly so he would understand, “No, we can’t just assume that it means no-one is home. What if we assumed wrong?!”
Angry, I got back in 91 and pressed down hard on the gas. Both gate posts fell forward as 91 plowed the gate down like knocking over a large aluminum can. I drove right over the gate with a clunk, clunk, clunk.
I said out loud to the empty car, “It’s a nice gate you had there. Too bad it’s made from aluminum.”
I walked up to the front door, still a little angry, but feeling better after taking out my anger on that gate. I pounded on the door and looked and listened for a response. There was a car in the driveway, so I thought there must be someone there. I went around to the backdoor and yelled to get someone’s attention, but still no response.
Now I knew that no one was home, so I headed back to 91. I was thankful that the officers I’d just talked with had kept going to the next driveway. Even though no one was home, I still knew that I was right. I saw the officers’ taillights and drove to the next driveway.
I knocked on another door and told a family with young kids that they needed to leave right away and head for Thurston High School. It seemed that they were aware, they just hadn’t made it out the door yet.
I knew it must be tough trying to grab everything important to you in a short amount of time, especially when you’re not even sure how much time you have. I also knew that it normally takes an extra fifteen minutes to get young kids out the door on a good day.
I tried to convince them to hurry up, saying, “Every moment you wait to leave is increasing the chances that you won’t be able to leave. Trees are coming down and blocking roads all the time.”
Fortunately, they were easier to convince than the guy in Space 14 back at Holiday Farm, and they started heading for their truck. I helped take a few of their things to the truck on my way out since their hands were full.
The canopy of the trees was burning angrily over my head through the whole area. Whenever I was outside, I heard the loud cracking of branches falling and the rush of the wind fanning the flames.
The officers flagged me down several more times to take out gates since their vehicles weren’t quite as tough as mine. They may have also still been worried about getting in trouble. I didn’t care if I got in trouble if it saved lives.
I was sure I’d be sore later from ramming the gates, but I didn’t care about that either. I just hoped 91 could hold up through the long night. With each gate she took out, my respect for her grew. I noticed which gates were tough to take down and which ones were as easy to drive through as a knife cutting through butter. Next time I went gate shopping, I’d know just what to look for.
With each blazing branch that fell, more of the forest floor and people’s lawns caught fire. Finally, I was fairly sure we had come to the end of the road. My knuckles cried out in pain as I knocked hard on what might have been the hundredth door that night.
I called out to anyone that might hear that they needed to get out. When I was sure that no one was home I got back in 91 to turn around. Huge burning branches fell all around me, quickly catching the dry grass on fire as I sped out of the driveway.
I had a horrible feeling that we could have missed someone, but even if we could keep searching, I couldn’t think of any other roads or driveways that we hadn’t been down.
As I made my way along a small road back to Blue River Drive, I could barely see anything because of the thick black smoke and the whitish-gray ashes filling the air.
The officers were far enough ahead of me that I couldn’t see their taillights, but in this dense smoke they could have been five feet in front of me and I wouldn’t know it.
Suddenly, a huge flaming branch fell in front of me, blocking the road. I decided that the only thing to do was to try to keep moving. I pressed my foot on the gas as I ran over the branches, and 91 shook terribly. My only hope was that I could keep driving over the flaming branches before 91 caught on fire.
I whispered, “Help me, Lord, help me! Help me!”
In that moment I felt God’s spirit with me in 91, and He answered my prayer as I passed through the flames into the darkness again. I breathed again as I sensed that God had been with me the whole time, guiding and protecting me.
I took a deep breath and laughed just a little as I breathed out and prayed out loud, “Sorry, I was worried for a second there. I forgot that you were with me… Thank you, Lord.”
Coming back to the store, I saw that things had gotten much worse than the last time I had been there. A bright orange framed the huge yellowish-white flames and reflected off my hood.
The flashing blue and red lights of the task force leader’s truck were all I had to help me find my way to him through the thick smoke. We didn’t have time to check many more homes before getting pushed back to the main street.
I talked with the task force leader, trying to figure out if the evacuation was complete, when something zinged over our heads. In all the chaos we couldn’t know for sure, but it seemed like an exploded bullet just whizzed past our heads. We did know that whatever it was, it was too close for comfort. That’s when the task force leader made the call that it was time for the emergency crew to evacuate Blue River.
The officers, the ambulance, the tanker, and our SUVs all left together. The school was only about two miles away. As we drove, I felt so much guilt. I had let my community down. There would probably be hundreds that died in this fire tonight. As I thought about the evacuation, I felt certain that we’d missed people.
It was getting hard to see the road through the tears. My chest was so tight, I couldn’t breathe. We had failed. It was too late to save them. People often thought of firefighters as fearless heroes that would run into any burning building. In reality, we did not want to die or lose any of our team members. We were like family, and we looked out for one another. We did not glorify self-sacrifice.
If people kept explosive ammo around their homes and ignored all the warnings, the sirens, and finally the explosions of their neighbors’ gas tanks, they had no excuse. We weren’t going to die to save people if they were too stubborn to save themselves. At least we were going to try not to die. My main fear was for the people that lived way out of town, without cell service or even close neighbors. They could be sound asleep in their beds right now.
When we arrived at the school about a minute later, I started to calm down because it wasn’t as bad there. We met in the parking lot to discuss our next steps. The more I considered the fire burning around us at the school, the stronger I felt about this being the wrong place to be when the fire burned around us.
I decided to make my case to the task force leader, “The track is a much bigger defensible space. If we aren’t able to defend the school, I don’t want to be next to that big building as it burns down.”
He looked me in the eye and pressed his lips together, “I agree. But we don’t have a key to the track.”
There was a fence around the track with a gate that locked it so no vehicles could get into the field.
I smiled behind my mask and said, “I have a key.”
He nodded and said loudly to everyone, “Okay then, let’s move the safety zone to the track.”
