The Holiday Farm Fire
Get Out! Now! A Firefighter’s Account of the Holiday Farm Fire of 2020
Part 4/12
Chapter Four
I asked an officer if he could confirm that Space 14 at Holiday Farm had been evacuated. He told me that several people had tried to get the man to leave, but he couldn’t confirm that the man had left.
As I pulled up to our tanker refilling the Forest Service engine, I caught the attention of Danny, another firefighter on our crew.
I asked, “Did we get the guy at Space 14 out?” After a pause, she slowly answered with big eyes, “I am not sure.”
I didn’t know what to do. The blazing trailer park was the last place anyone would want to go, but I knew I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t confirm he was out of there. I told Danny, “I’m going in to check.”
I got back in 91 and drove into the fire. I saw my student’s dad coming in too. I rolled down my window and motioned for him to do the same. Then, I yelled over the roar of the wind and flames at him, “What are you doing?”
He yelled back, “I need to get my dogs.”
I said firmly, “No, you don’t. You need to get out of here, now!”
He shook his head, and I realized I’d do the same for my dog. I gave in. “Hurry up!”
When I arrived at Space 14, I saw the wheelchair outside his trailer. That was a bad sign. The roar of the fire was so loud, I could barely hear myself knock, so I didn’t wait for an answer.
Fortunately, the door wasn’t locked, and I let myself in.
I saw the man in bed and yelled, “It’s time to go! I need you to get up and get out! Now!”
The smell and his slurred words told me he was drunk. “What the hell d’ya think yer doin’ in here?!” He yelled with eyes covered by a knot of angry eyebrows.
I grabbed his curtains and yanked them back. As he looked out his window, which looked like the window on a fireplace, I said, “Funny you should mention it. Looks like hell out there.”
His eyes doubled in size, and he swallowed hard.
He sobered up quickly and threw his covers off, but he was just in underwear. While he grabbed clothes, I went out to load his wheelchair in 91.
Embers were falling like rain all around me and all over me.
The wheelchair must have been about 400 pounds, so it was going to have to stay. I looked around and thought I saw the guy’s car still over at Space 42. How long does it take to get your dogs in the car?! A burning branch fell far too close for comfort, and I took it as a cue to head back inside.
I called out, “Time to go, buddy!” He threw one more thing in a bag, put it on his shoulder, then started making his way out with his hands braced against the hallway walls.
It was so hard to be patient as he slowly made his way toward the door. I stepped back out to check on whether the guy with the dogs had evacuated.
Thankfully, I saw his car speeding towards the exit. When the man made it to the doorway, I decided he could use a little extra help getting down the steps of his trailer that I’d seen him struggle with last time I saw him. I figured it would be a lot faster, plus I was wanting us out of there about fifteen minutes ago.
I said, “I’m going to help you down, ok?”
He nodded, and I picked him up and put him in the back seat of 91. Unbelievably, I saw two guys with shovels walking into the RV park, looking like they were ready to fight the fire with their shovels.
Through 91’s speakers, I blared, “Get out of here, you idiots!”
I felt, more than heard, the familiar rumble of another tree falling over the roaring and cracking of the angry fire. I thought, ‘If these guys are thinking they can head in here to fight the fire, it must not be that bad out there,’ so I turned left on the highway, away from the origin of the fire, and west towards the evacuation point.
I hoped those guys followed my advice, but if not, I decided that was their fault, not mine. All I could do was warn people and offer them help, but in the end, they made their own choices.
Thirteen years as a pastor had taught me that lesson. Head shaking and jaw clenched, I drove as fast as I dared down the highway surrounded by burning trees.
In some places, it looked like lava was flowing on either side of the vehicle as far as you could see. In some places, the forest floor was just pitch black with bright, almost white flames flailing wildly in the branches. Trees near us showed us perspective to the flames with their thin, black silhouettes.
My headlights hit a thick, dark-orange smoke, making it incredibly hard to see more than a few feet in front of the vehicle.
I went as fast as I dared, my eyes focused like a laser on the white line right ahead of me. When I calmed down a little bit, I figured I should introduce myself to the man in my backseat. “By the way, I’m Brent.”
He muttered, “Joe.” I wasn’t sure if he was always this grumpy, or if I just caught him on a really bad day. I guess this was a really bad day by anyone’s standards.
He took out his phone and started filming the flaming trees that surrounded us. I heard over the radio that we had moved the evacuation site further west.
I got on my radio again to tell dispatch what I was doing and where I was “28 91 to East 2.”
Dispatch let me know they were listening by responding: “East 2.”
I went ahead: “I’ve got the guy from Space 14. I’m taking him to McKenzie High School (seven miles west) hopefully to connect him with someone there to the new evacuation spot.”
As dispatch repeated back what I said, I barely saw a boulder come off the hill before it hit the back of the car. We shook violently, and I said the shortest of prayers, “Oh, God!”
The boulder shoved the vehicle about a foot to the left, but thank God we were still moving! I worried that it was just a matter of time before we were finishing this trip on foot.
I pictured myself carrying Joe down the highway until the smoke made it too hard to breathe. I noticed Joe trying to pick up the phone he dropped from the floor of 91. Just as I took a breath to collect myself, a heavily distorted voice on the radio said something about Evacuation Level 3, but I couldn’t make out the details of the location. At about the same time, I also missed seeing some rocks on the road.
91 shook and jolted over them. “Wooow!” escaped from my mouth, then I thought out loud, “Alright, we’re going to have to take it REAL slow!”
I was driving on the left side of the road, the furthest I could get from the mountain on our right, hoping to avoid rocks that had rolled down the hill. It must be that the fire was splitting rocks, or falling trees had loosened rocks. Perhaps it was a combination of the two.
We still managed to hit more rocks, so I spoke encouragement to my new favorite car: “Hang in there 91! Don’t give up on me now.”
I heard someone on the radio talking about evacuating up to Mill Creek Road. Also, Mill Creek to Horse Creek was now at Level 2 Evacuation. That included our home, but Level 2 Evacuation meant that you didn’t have to leave yet.
Evacuation Level 1 was ‘Ready,’ Level 2 was ‘Set,’ and Level 3 was “Go!” At least on the side of the fire my family was on, the evacuation levels didn’t go from 0 to 3 in five minutes.
It looked, and felt, an awful lot like we were in a huge fireplace. Swirls of bright oranges and yellows glowing from all the trees and bushes filled the sides of my vision.
I tried to stay focused on the sliver of road that I could see before the smoke blocked my vision. Our forest floor was usually a dense mess of fallen trees, blackberry bushes, ivy, and moss.
The forest floor had been even worse ever since the huge snowstorm about a year and a half ago. That storm had brought down many trees, damaging homes beyond repair, and we lost power for two weeks.
Few of the thousands of fallen trees and branches that broke under the weight of the snow had been cleaned up. I wished our forest didn’t have so much fuel for this fire.
As I drove, I could still make out individual trees, but they were nearly all the same blinding color, like the face of the sun. 91 jolted wildly again and I got back to praying, “Oh, Jesus.”
The scenery around us turned dark orange for a moment, with a few bright-yellow flames blazing on trees. I heard Joe behind me whisper, “Dang.”
The smoke just seemed to be getting thicker to the point where I could barely see a thing in front of me. In frustration I groaned, “I can’t see anything.”
Then I realized I should try to calm Joe down, “We’re gonna get through this.”
We had a few moments of the scene around us getting darker and I heard over the radio that they were planning to meet at Takoda’s restaurant. I was surprised that Takoda’s was still standing.
The fire really wasn’t moving east if the restaurant less than a mile from where the fire started was still considered safe. I was about five miles west of the fire, and things were getting worse.
I realized then that I was probably right around the Christmas Treasures store where another fire had started. I really wished I had turned right instead of left back at Holiday Farm, but I still held onto the hope that I’d be able to get us out of here alive. I let that hope fuel my focus.
I took the first deep breath in a while and called out to the backseat, “Joe, you’re one lucky dog tonight!”
I let out a little laugh, and thought I heard Joe laugh a little. I was surprised when I saw another set of headlights. I quickly swerved to the right side of the road to avoid hitting the person that was as crazy as me if they were out on this road. It was hard to be certain in these conditions, but it looked like Chief’s truck.
I looked at the clock on 91 and I was surprised to see it read 11:11.
Thinking out loud again I said, “Time flies when…” I couldn’t think of anything catchy to finish that phrase with, so I just finished with the awful truth, “When you’re trying to evacuate towns in a fire-storm.”
A distorted voice came through the radio: “Hey Chief Plews, if that’s you, we need to think about evacuating Blue River.”
Blue River was the town I was driving to with Joe. I guessed that would be my next assignment.
Chief Plews announced: “It’s already done.” I would be shocked if that meant they had finished the evacuation. I’d be willing to bet that she meant the evacuation had already been ordered.
Dean responded: “Copy. This thing’s up on the road to Cougar Reservoir, and I don’t know when we’ll be able to get us out.”
I pictured the highway that goes up to Cougar Reservoir and the popular Cougar Hot Springs covered in flames. Hopefully all the people camping out there had already gone home after Labor Day weekend. ‘Oh Lord, help them get out of there.’
Chief reported: “I am just coming back from Christmas Treasures. I got a flat tire on a rockslide. It is as far down as I can see on both sides of the road.” Now I was almost certain it was Chief’s truck I just passed.
“I copy that. Have we thought about getting any other task forces up here?” Dean asked.
Chief informed us: “I’ve called a conflag.” That was short for conflagration, and it meant that nearby departments would send help in for reinforcement.
“I copy. Uh, do me a favor and just take that road to Cougar around the long way back to Takoda’s if you don’t mind,” Dean requested. “That rockslide… I went through it as well, and there’s now trees down in Blue River.”
Oh man, it sounded like we had all sorts of fun ahead. I picked up the radio and introduced myself: “28 35, checking in.”
Chief got back to me: “Copy. Go ahead 28 35.”
I stated: “I’m not sure if I passed you going through, but the section between Holiday Farm and Christmas Treasures is very unsafe. We need evacuees to head east if they are west of Holiday Farm.”
“Affirmative. Watch the rockslide; and there’s a big tree across the road. The rockslide popped my tires,” Chief advised me.
I nodded as I replied: “I’m going to be evaluating 91 when I get to the school.”
Our conversation ended with Chief’s: “Copy that.” Just after that dispatch asked what I’d said, and Chief said evacuees needed to head east if they are east of Holiday Farm.
Did I say west when I meant east? That was a sign that I wasn’t doing so well mentally. I was getting directions mixed up and not thinking clearly in all this chaos.
I was so scared of getting stuck on this stretch of the highway. If a tree blocked the road behind us and in front of us, I wasn’t sure if anyone would be able to save us.
Chief had made it through despite a rockslide and a tree laying across the road, so there must be a way. It was tempting to turn around, but I decided to stay my course. Surely, I had made it more than halfway to the school by now, and it should be getting better as I get further from the start of the fire.
It sounded like the main thing I needed to watch out for was rocks, which I hadn’t done so well avoiding so far.
Soon, I saw the flaming tree Chief had warned me about spread across the road. Knowing that there was a way past it, I went to the tip of the tree, a bit off the road, and drove over it, praying that 91’s tires wouldn’t melt from the flaming branches or get punctured by a sharp branch. It was really rough-going as we drove over the end of the burning tree, but I kept praying, and I kept the gas pedal down.
It seemed like forever, but before long we were over it.
I cheered, “Yeah! We made it! Just keep going 91!” I caught a brief glimpse of Joe nod and smile just a bit in the back seat. The blue glow of my dashboard and the orange glow from outside the vehicle lit his face.
I wasn’t sure how long it would be until 91 had melted tires or got high-centered, but I kept praying that we could keep going. Every now and then, I’d hear an explosion, probably from gas tanks catching fire.
It reminded me of a recent house fire that we’d fought. The house and all the stuff around it on the property made me think of a TV show called Hoarders. The amount of stuff that exploded during that fire shocked me. I was certain there were a few more houses that looked like that around here.
With each explosion we heard, it was a reminder that I was passing people’s homes that were burning. We would normally be out all night putting the fire out for a single house, but tonight all we could do was run for our lives.
Suddenly, I came across what must have been the rockslide.
It started with a few rocks jarring us, so I slowed way down at once. I painstakingly made my way a little bit off the road on the left, as close to the blazing trees by the highway as possible. I hoped to avoid as many rocks as possible that way, but I still felt like I was trying to get 91 to go rock climbing.
I kept praying with my eyes wide open and lips barely moving.
“Woohoo! 91, you beast, you did it!” I laughed and exhaled as we felt the tires hit smooth pavement again.
I paid special attention to whether I felt a limping motion that would indicate a flat tire. I was determined that if I got a flat, I would just keep driving until 91 couldn’t move one more inch.
I’d seen cars abandoned along the side of the freeway in LA with the mangled corner of the car sitting flat on the road. Obviously, the driver had kept going until they had scraped away the car down to the wheel rim, and it literally could not move one more inch.
Now I finally understood the desperation it would take to do that. The tires somehow held up, so thankfully, that was not necessary. After the longest seven miles of my life, we approached the school, which had an extended line of cars exiting and heading west.
