Frontline demolition: Bugar relates his perspective on fighting historic Loyal fire

By Cheyenne Thomas For many years, Paul Bugar Jr. has helped fire departments across Clark County in the events of major fires, bringing out an excavator to the sites of emergencies to tear down barns and houses to help firefighters gain access to hot spots in blazes. In all his years of assisting firefighters on these calls, he’s never experienced a fire quite like the one that happened in Loyal last week.

Bugar was on site with his excavator to help firefighters in Loyal battle the fire that took out three buildings on Loyal’s Main Street. Throughout the night Thursday and even into Friday morning, he worked alongside the emergency crews as they battled the fire, following the plans put out by Loyal Fire Chief Scott Radue and Mike Meyer to put the fire out.

“It was a very long night,” he said. “I got back from working at the fire around 5:30 a.m. to go to work and tell the guys what to do and then was called back out there around 6 a.m. to help with hot spots.”

The 63-year old from Loyal has been helping out on fires like these for decades. All it takes is a phone call from any area fire department to send him or another member of the Bugar excavator crew out to help a fire department, using their skills to take out chunks of buildings to give firefighters openings to send water to the heart of fires. The work has taken him all over the county, and it’s a job he knows is very important in dealing with burning structures.

“I do this all the time,” he said. “I go to barn fires, house fires. It’s not only for Loyal but for the whole county. I’ve gone to fires in Spencer. I’ve helped the Thorp Fire Department fight fires up in Stanley. It’s just something that we do. We’ve been doing it a long time; my dad even did it when I was younger. We go out whenever the telephone rings and they ask for our help.”

He got that call for help on Thursday night. The fire in Loyal was a unique one, he said, as the buildings affected by the fire had limited access. Unlike most other structures that allow a person to easily go around all sides of the building, Bugar said they only had two real options of attack at the Loyal fire.

“It wasn’t like all the other buildings,” he said. “Here we had to work from the ends. It was hard to get into. The buildings were long and narrow. There was no access to the sides. They had basements, which meant that you had to be very careful about taking the excavator across the ground. It was very inaccessible.”

Nonetheless, Bugar persisted along with the other emergency responders on site. He would sit in the excavator and tear down portions of the buildings the firefighters wanted to have removed. He worked very closely with the Loyal fire chief throughout the night, leaving his machine several times to discuss strategy as the battle against the fire raged on.

“I worked real tight with the fire chief on what we should do next,” he said. “You don’t just go around and do what you want. You do what needs to be done. There is a plan of attack and what the firefighters want you to do next. You have to make sure you have a plan. I would have to stop a few times and get out to talk to Scott Radue or Mike Meyer about what they wanted to do. It’s no different than playing football. When things start to change, you call a timeout and get together to come up with a new game plan.”

At times, Bugar came very close to the blaze in his machine, and the excavator took some damage about halfway through the night that made fighting the fire even tougher for him inside the machine.

“Halfway through the night a brick fell down and broke the front windshield,” he said. “I ended up losing the air conditioning after that and that made it tougher. I went around the building later and the firemen were shooting water into the building and I ended up in the line of fire. I took a bath twice from that.”

Coordination during a fire is key, Bugar said. In addition to coordinating a plan of attack to contain the fire, he said it is very important for him as an excavator driver to be aware of his surroundings, not only to avoid firefighters moving around the scene, but other hazards that can come up if the fire behaves unpredictably and changes course.

“You have to watch what you’re doing,” he said. “You could make a mess of things if you don’t watch what’s going on around you.”

As the fire continued to burn during the night, Bugar said the flames went up onto the roofs of the buildings, which is something that contributed to the early struggle to get the fire under control. Then, as the night wore on, there was the danger of the fire reaching nearby gas lines. Those had to be turned off, and Bugar had to take

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his excavator around to dig holes for the gas company to gain access to the lines.

“The fire got onto the roofs and they couldn’t get water through there and the fire kinda got away on them,” he said about the first hours of the fire. “On the east end of the buildings, they had gas meters that had to be dug up and turned off. Around 2 a.m. the gas company got out there and had to get those capped off so we wouldn’t end up with more of a problem. That was another major concern with the fire.”

When the fire was finally put out, three buildings were gone from Loyal’s Main Street. Bugar said losing those three buildings is a huge loss for Loyal, both from a business standpoint and a historical one.

“It’s going to leave a big hole on our Main Street,” he said. “I don’t know if they will ever come back. The food pantry should come back, but I don’t know about the others. If we lose the laundromat, that will be a big blow. A lot of people use the laundromat, and our business used it. It was the place to go to take care of our really soiled work clothes. We also lost a lot of history. It’s hard to see those things get lost, but I am glad that no one was hurt.”

VALORIE BRECHT/STAFF PHOTO

Justin Clements of Clemy Exteriors washes off the sign at Hair We Are hair salon across the street from where the fire took place. He took it upon himself to clean the nearby sidewalks and storefronts for free the morning after the fire.