The Holiday Farm Fire
Get Out! Now! A Firefighter’s Account of the Holiday Farm Fire of 2020
Part 3/12
Chapter Three
When I returned to the Holiday Farm, I went to Space 42. As I walked to the door, I sent Katie a message: “Pack like we’re evacuating.”
I slowly opened the door of the trailer at Space 42, not sure what to expect of these dogs. Inside, I found two huge pit bulls, looking really scared.
Katie wrote back: “Should I grab photos or just a few essentials?”
As far as I could tell, the fire wasn’t spreading in her direction, so I wrote back: “Grab the paperwork, photos, and such, and just have it ready to go. Bad fire at Holiday Farm.”
I still had a big scar on my nose from the last time I was helping a lady move. Her cat came up to me and put its front paws on my legs like it wanted me to pick it up. As soon as I bent down to pick it up, the scared cat attacked me, sinking its teeth into my nose and its claws everywhere else. Katie had to rush me to Urgent Care.
As I stepped into the dark, cluttered RV, one of the dogs looked scared, and the other stood up and snarled at me. I swallowed and backed up a step. When I thought through the process of putting two scared pit bulls in my SUV, then hopefully continuing to pick up more human passengers, I realized there were too many ways in which it could turn out badly. I felt awful leaving them there, but I wasn’t giving up on them, I just knew that it wasn’t the right time for me to rescue them.
I heard splitting wood and looked around, praying nothing would fall on me. I both felt and heard the earthshaking force of a tree hitting the ground nearby. Shaken, I looked out the door. Thankfully, I couldn’t see anything damaged by it.
I let out a big breath I hadn’t even realized I’d sucked in.
I left and continued texting Katie: “Roads are going to be blocked by trees down. I can hear them coming down.”
My daughter and wife were at home, just a couple of miles away from the fire, and I realized I needed to make sure Katie had our SUV to be able to get our animals and a few of our things to safety. I called to tell her that I was going to pick her up and drive her to the station so she could get our SUV home.
I pulled into our driveway a few minutes later, and she immediately came out to 91 looking nervous. She jumped in the passenger seat, and I wasted no time in getting to the station. I could see her nodding out of the corner of my eye as I briefly filled her in on what was happening and gave her a few instructions about what to do to prepare to evacuate.
I told her I wanted her to park under the carport while she packed to protect her car from any tree branches that fell. I hoped I could come back, get the trailer hooked up, and take off when it came time for us to evacuate.
As I dropped Katie off at Station 1, she grabbed my hand and quietly said through a tight throat, “I love you… See you soon.”
It was what she usually said when we said goodbye, but it wasn’t the same as usual this time. Her dark eyes held mine for an extra second, and I sensed that she was still hurting from our fight over the weekend, but I also got the sense that she didn’t care about that anymore. I heard her promise as she said, ‘See you soon.’
I swallowed and replied gently, “Love you, too.”
I wanted to promise that I would be back, but for some reason, the words couldn’t come. Then she opened the door and was out.
I couldn’t even remember at that moment what it was we had been fighting about. It’s funny how a natural disaster can help you see what’s important and what isn’t. I wished we hadn’t spent the last couple of days not talking.
What if this were the last time I saw her?
At that moment, all I wanted was to stay with her and our daughter Elizabeth, pack up our things, and get to safety together. As she climbed into our SUV, I forced myself to focus on the task at hand and I put 91 in reverse.
I was going to have to trust God to keep them safe.
I had to get back to evacuating everyone else. I got back and found that law enforcement had made a lot more progress on evacuating the area surrounding Holiday Farm, so I picked up where they left off.
There were a few more people without vehicles that I came across and I had them hop in my vehicle. Another trip to the school left me at a loss for words. How could I even explain to the crew just how bad it was getting?
What used to be fire in the canopy of the trees had quickly gone down so that now thick patches of yellow flames lit the forest floor. The wind and the heat combined created a fire unlike any I’d seen in training videos, rapidly consuming the forest.
The blindingly bright light of the flames spanned the length of the trees and flew above them, probably doubling the height of the 80-foot trees. Although the sun had set hours ago, it was bright out.
When I arrived at the school, a woman flagged me down and said she had seen fire on the hills behind the Christmas Treasures store. I called the report in on the radio, which had been non-stop chatter, and Chief replied that she was going to go check it out.
I found my student’s family and explained to them that I couldn’t get their dogs. They looked so crushed. I felt guilty, but sometimes you had to make tough calls as a firefighter. I wasn’t sure why they left their dogs behind in the first place, but I couldn’t be held responsible when I was in charge of evacuating so many people in so little time.
God only knew how much time we had left before Holiday Farm was too dangerous to enter.
All I knew was it wasn’t enough time.
On my way back, I saw the fire behind the Christmas Treasures store, exactly as others were describing it. I heard one of the sheriffs asking for help with evacuating Dearborn Island, which was southwest of Holiday Farm.
I responded I would be there in a minute.
On the island, I acted as the local guide for the officers that didn’t know the area. We crossed the only bridge to the island, making me acutely aware of how trapped we would be on the burning island if anything should happen to it. I asked one officer to stay at the bridge to keep an eye on it since it was our only way out.
As I did, I saw what looked like orange fireworks through the clearing in the trees and heard an explosion.
Probably someone’s ammo exploding.
The rest of us drove around the island using the loudspeakers on our vehicles to spread the news of the fire and the required evacuation. We knocked on every door we could find. Some houses still had lanterns on, and one even had five cars in the driveway. Did these people really have five extra cars?!
It was eerie because we didn’t see a soul the whole time. Hopefully, that meant that everyone received the emergency text alerts; however, with how spotty cell reception was there, we had to be certain.
One of the officers asked me, “Do you think we got ’em all?”
I explained, “It’s hard to know for sure because it’s like a maze back here with so many trailers in random places. There could even be homeless people camping out. A lot of the houses are just rentals. We can’t really know, but I can’t think of any other places to check, so I think we’ve done all we can.”
We crossed back over that bridge, relieved for ourselves, but also afraid that we could have missed someone.
On our way back to the Holiday Farm RV Resort, I asked on the radio: “Can anyone confirm that Space 14 has been evacuated?”
I heard a disheartening response of tick-tick-tick on the radio. When I arrived, I could see that flames were almost everywhere at the Holiday Farm.
