Pure devastation: fire leaves gaping hole on Loyal’s Main Street

By Valorie Brecht “A fire chief’s worst nightmare” — that is how Loyal Fire Chief Scott Radue described it.

An eerie sight unfolded last Thursday night, Sept. 12, as a fire devoured three downtown buildings on Loyal’s Main Street. Onlookers stood transfixed, unable to look away from the horrific sight, many of them quiet, taking it all in. The smell of smoke filled the air and lingered on clothes and hair. The fire would die down momentarily to a heavy gray cloud, only to billow up again into flames. When all was said and done, four families were displaced from their apartments and the laundromat, fitness center and food pantry lost their home. However, no one was injured or killed, and the community has vowed to come back stronger than ever.

The fire began at 232 N. Main St., in Michael Conard’s apartment behind the laundromat.

“I had started the oven because I wanted to make a frozen pizza for supper. I was watching television, waiting for the beeper to go off on the oven. Before that happened, all of a sudden, I started smelling smoke. I immediately — I already had windows and doors open and I turned on my smoke meter… went into the kitchen, and there were flames inside the oven. I thought I should open the oven, but then I thought, ‘No, no, no. You don’t give oxygen fire.’ But there were flames inside the oven and the smoke was getting thicker, and I started coughing, and I said, ‘I gotta get everybody out of here.’ So I went upstairs, knocked on doors and got everybody awake and out. By the time — I could not come back down to my apartment because the smoke was so thick, so I had to go out the front door. By that time, when I came around and got back here (to the back of the building), there were flames coming out of my apartment. Everywhere. It went very fast,” said Conard. “I simply can’t believe it.”

He also said it was a relatively new gas oven, only installed about a year ago. He said he never had any problems with it before.

At 7:39 p.m., Radue received an emergency alert on his phone. By the time the fire department was on scene, everyone was out of the main structure. They made sure everyone was evacuated from that section of buildings: the old Chasteen-Hoesley Insurance building immediately to the north of the laundromat (236 N. Main), the former Memories Made Forever photography studio to the north of that (238 N. Main), The Loyal House/Fitness Room

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immediately to the south of the laundromat (230 N. Main), the Loyal Food Pantry to the south of that (228/226 N. Main), and the apartment building to the south of that (222 N. Main).

Radue, who’s been a firefighter since 1996 and chief for about four years, said the fire was a real challenge to contain because of the location.

“This is every fire chief’s worst nightmare, to have a Main Street fire, just because the buildings are so close together,” he said.

Right away, it was all hands on deck to fight the inferno. Fire departments responding included Loyal, Central Fire (Abbotsford/Colby area), Chili, Granton, Greenwood, Owen-Withee-Curtiss (O-W-C) and Spencer. Fire Chief Paul Skibbie of the Thorp Fire Department, who is also vice president of the local mutual aid system; and his wife, Kari Skibbie, the EMS coordinator for Thorp, were also on hand. O-W-C and Spencer each had a ladder truck, with one set up in front of the building and one in back.

“We went after Apartment C. We set our engine up on Main Street here and we put another engine on the back side in the parking lot. Our main goal is to try to push it back where it came from versus chasing it through the apartment. If we approached it 100 percent from the back side, we would potentially be pushing it all the way through. We want to try to head it off before it gets through and push it back,” said Radue.

“Well, when the first building was pretty much fully engulfed — Main Street’s set up that way. Everything’s one on top of the other. You know it’s going to escalate really quick. The idea is to head it off before. We cut it off here (to the north), because we knew that the buildings were lower. We cut it off to the north because we knew we had a better chance there. Unfortunately, we can’t get inside the apartments very well and cool them with them so close together.”

Within the first hour of the firefighters arriving on scene, it looked as though they had gained the upper hand on the situation, with no flames visible and only a grey cloud of smoke rising from the first building. However, looks can be deceiving, as flames were mounting on the inside, climbing the walls and eventually breaking through into a bright billowing cloud. By 9:08, the fire was roaring over top of the laundromat and fitness center buildings.

When the water aimed from multiple angles failed to contain the flames, Radue decided to bring in the excavator to tear down some walls and get at the fire better. At around 9:17 p.m., Paul Bugar Jr. started demolishing some of the first building.

“The main structure was pretty much 100 percent lost. At that point there was no coming back,” said Radue. “We weren’t making ground in the apartment next to it and we needed to do something. So that’s when we called the backhoe in.”

It turned out to be an extremely long night for the first responders on scene. Things got worse before they got better. According to this reporter’s pictures, by around 11 p.m., the fire was over top of the food pantry building.

As late as 12:39 a.m. Sept. 13, although the firefighters had fought back the blaze significantly, a hot, bright core of flames could still be seen between the fitness center and food pantry buildings. However, they had turned the corner and were able to keep the fire from advancing to 222 N. Main. At 2:26 a.m., the Loyal Fire Department released the first surrounding department to go home — Central Fire — and other departments gradually were released after that. As of 7:15 a.m., water was still being poured on the smoldering ruins. At 8:31 a.m., Owen’s ladder truck went home, which was around the same time as Spencer’s. Loyal city workers then pushed the debris up into piles and blocked off the area with caution tape and cones. The street was opened to traffic around 9:30 a.m. The Loyal fire truck pulled away from Main Street around 1:13 p.m. However, several local firefighters, running on energy drinks and adrenaline at that point, planned to stick around to be there for the insurance inspectors coming to view the damage.

The event put a strain on available resources, but that’s where the mutual aid from surrounding fire departments proved so pivotal.

“We run low on (oxygen) bottles in a situation like this because it’s so large and we have so many people on air packs. But actually Spencer’s got a compressor right on their truck. We did pull some here,” said Radue.

In battling the blaze, the firefighters also quickly depleted the city’s water supply. The water tower’s water level was getting low, so at 9:25 p.m., Radue requested tanker trucks. The various responding fire departments began shuttling water. They used 450,000 gallons from the city pond.

The neighboring departments were deployed using MABAS (Mutual Aid Box Alarm System). This system allows a fire department to employ a multi-agency response to a disaster. Adjacent departments can voluntarily agree to share equipment, personnel or services with each other at no cost.

“It’s essentially a pre-planned template to help the fire departments get more help. So if we need more help, we can just pull the next box. So we don’t have to contact the individual departments. If we need more tankers, another engine or water, we can just pull the next box. We don’t use it a lot in Loyal yet but Paul (Skibbie) and his wife did a very good job assisting us,” said Radue.

The emergency response was of course also not limited to the firefighters themselves. The fire department also utilized Bugar with his excavator, who also dug holes so the utility company could get at the gas lines and shut them off.

On the EMS side, Loyal and Greenwood EMTs stayed on scene throughout the night to keep an eye on the firefighters and make sure they were staying healthy.

“Our EMS workers come to watch the guys. Sometimes what we see is different than what they tell us. They’re going to tell us, ‘I’m OK. I’m OK.’ But we can see that they’re exhausted. Their eyes are telling us that they’re not OK. So then we just gently persuade them that we need to have a little time out. We call it rehab, where we do the vitals, get them some drinks and get them out of their hot clothes — just give them a chance to come back down to Earth. Firemen are sometimes superheroes and they kind of forget that they are human,” said Loyal Ambulance Chief Dave Esselman.

The ambulance workers also continually passed out water to the firefighters and monitored all sides of the situation. There were between 10 and 12 EMTs between Greenwood and Loyal present.

“They did a great job. We had a number of EMTs that were here until the wee hours of the morning,” said Esselman.

The only medical call the ambulance responded to was one person who had been in the apartments and was suffering from smoke inhalation. However, they were able to move the person away from the smoky area and rehabilitate them.

Other individuals assisting with the fire response included the Loyal Police Department, which blocked off the street and rerouted traffic, and several local businesses and individuals.

For more on the community response to the fire, see the story on page 8.