After the Fire

PARADISE — Imagine for a moment driving in a pickup truck on a country road near Paradise, in the dead of night, nearly blinded by dust whipped up by 106- mile-per-hour winds, as you flee for safety from a fast approaching massive fire storm.

Clinton Laflin, livestock production agent for the Midway Extension District in Ellsworth and Russell counties, doesn’t have to imagine it — on Dec. 15, he lived it during what has since became known as the Four County Fire.

“That day started with a really nice morning, but the day’s events took a turn that I did not expect,” he said in a recent interview with the Independent-Reporter.

Pretty nervous

At one point in the ordeal, with high winds and flames coming straight at him, Clinton didn’t know if he would be able to make it back to the highway.

“That was really the only point where I got pretty nervous,” he said. “Honestly, when I left my driveway, I thought it was going to be the last time I was going to see my house.”

Life or death choices

For Clinton, the choice that day was to save his house or his cows. He chose the cows.

“That’s our livelihood,” he said. “We wanted to protect those animals. But at the same time, I also didn’t know that if I got into the house, what the hell would I grab. You can’t dilly-dally in a situation like that.”

Clinton called the Russell County 911 dispatch and told officials there was an intact home on his property, along with 50 cows.

“The dispatchers, through no fault of their own, basically told me, good luck,” he said. “Because the volunteer fire department and dispatch were so overwhelmed.”

Once the cows were moved to safety, Clinton said the wind switched to the north, which, in turn, pushed the fire straight toward him — and back to the road he and Ethan Dickerson, who was riding with him, had driven in on.

“At this point, that was the only road we knew we could travel somewhat safely,” Clinton said.

Turning south, Clinton and Ethan continued to try to get back to safety. However, they didn’t realize that in the road ahead of them, the wind had pushed over a row of seven to eight electrical power poles.

“Those lines and those poles were flat on the ground,” Clinton said. “We didn’t see that until we were right up on top of one, and we were going about 50 mph.”

Clinton’s truck passed directly over one of the poles and several wires. It then entered the ditch and came back on the road.

“At this point, I’m thinking I just totally destroyed the front end of my truck,” Clinton said. “But come to find out, the only thing I had to replace on that truck was two tires.”

Clinton crawled along to the bottom of the hill, where he and Ethan managed to change one of the flat tires with a spare.

“But we still had another flat tire, so I had to limp into town (Russell) and hope it didn’t totally ruin something else,” Clinton added. “That’s when I literally prayed to God out loud — get me home.”

But they were still four to five miles from Russell.

Making it out okay

For those unfamiliar with Clinton’s medical condition, he has a mild case of Cerebral Palsy, which has affected him much like a stroke.

“So the right side of my body is significantly weaker from a muscle and coordination standpoint than my left side,” he said. “So I have to walk with a cane or a walker to be able to live and work independently and serve as a livestock extension agent for Russell and Ellsworth counties.”

Throughout his whole experience during the fire, Clinton said his medical condition didn’t cross his mind until later.

“We made it out okay,” he said. “I wasn’t a Ford man before the fire, but I am now, because that truck really held together well.”

Everyone on edge

Given the extremely dry and windy conditions forecast for Dec. 15, Clinton said everybody was “pretty edgy anyway” that day.

Clinton works out of the Midway District office in Russell, The Extension shares the building with the Russell County EMS.

“So the EMS crew knows exactly where I live,” he said.

At 3 p.m., the EMS crew came into Clinton’s office and told him the fire was getting close to his rented farmstead, which is seven miles north of Russell on K-281 Highway, then five miles back west on Mellard Road, 12 miles south of Paradise.

“I would be just about a quarter of a mile west of the Saline River,” he added. “Up on what they call the Newman place.”

The message to Clinton was clear — if he wanted to go home and grab something to save from the fire, he’d better do it now.

The decision was made to close the Midway District office in Russell for the day due to safety concerns, so employees could get home safely.

Clinton got in his F-150 Ford pickup truck and headed home. As he pulled into his driveway around 3:30 p.m., he was met by his landlord, Ken Stielow of the Bar S Ranch.

In addition to Ken Stielow, Bar S Ranch is owned by Ken’s wife, Pat, and their daughter and son-in-law, Stephanie and David Dickerson.

The Bar S Ranch headquarters is three miles north and east of Clinton’s farmstead.

“Bar S is helping me run my cows,” Clinton said. “I have about 30 Angus cows in addition to working for the extension.”

The house on Clinton’s farmstead dates back to 1883. In addition to the house, there is a two-car garage, a set of pens and working facilities for cattle, and a barn.

The farmstead was on the southern edge of the fire.

Clinton noticed the sky was extremely dark, with an orange glow and smoke everywhere. When he walked into his house, there was no electricity.

“Conditions were starting to get a little dicey at that point,” he added.

Although Clinton’s house was fine for the moment, Ken strongly urged him to return to Russell.

“The fire, at that point, was over on the Fairport Road, which is just a couple of miles west of my house,” Clinton added.

Both Ken and Clinton drove back to Russell in separate vehicles.

In Russell, Clinton stayed with church friends on the north side of town. There, he updated his family on the situation. Then Ethan, David and Stephanie’s son, came into the house and told Clinton he thought they could get the fall calves at Clinton’s house moved to safety.

When Ethan asked if Clinton wanted to go with him, his one word answer was loud and clear — absolutely.

“I hated sitting in the house just not doing anything,” Clinton said. “I felt like if I could be an active help to try to save 60 head of cows, I was going to do it.”

Clinton and Ethan got in Clinton’s pickup and headed toward Clinton’s farmstead.

“Come to find out later, at that point I had one of only two fully functional vehicles on the whole place,” Clinton said. “Because the other vehicles would either get burned up in the fire, or blown over in the wind storm.”

Upon arrival at Clinton’s farmstead, he and Ethan noticed through the darkness that the fire was spreading fast because of the high wind. Clinton guessed the sustained gusts were over 80 miles per hour.

“The police had everything blocked off, and we told them hey, we’re just trying to get back to the ranch to take stock of cows that we could potentially move, our houses are in danger,” Clinton said.

By 7 p.m., the fire had already jumped K-281 Highway on the east side of the road.

“It had burned all the way south to the Bar S headquarters,” Clinton said.

As they made the turn to go to the headquarters, Clinton and Ethan could see flames coming out of David and Stephanie’s house. In addition, the show barn was on fire, along with a large part of the ranch’s hay storage.

“That was pretty emotional, because when we saw David and Steph’s house go up in flames, we also realized their dogs were inside,” Clinton said.

Furthermore, the house that Ethan was going to move into at the ranch was also burning.

“We realized it was going to be pretty bad, because we knew where most of the cows were, and we knew where the fire was, but it was dark and you couldn’t really see a lot,” Clinton said.

Clinton and Ethan then went to Ken and Pat’s house, which was fine.

“The fire had burned all the way around the property line, but stopped on every side of the house,” Clinton said. “Ken and Pat’s dog, Josie, was sitting on the porch barking her head off going where have you people been — come get me.”

Ethan grabbed Josie and threw her in the back of Clinton’s truck.

“She was pretty happy to see other people,” Clinton noted.

Volunteer firefighters were trying to protect Ken and Pat’s house, so Clinton and Ethan were optimistic it would be saved.

From there, Clinton and Ethan drove back to Clinton’s house.

“The visibility was zero,” Clinton said. “That was an unnerving feeling. You know where you are at, because you are familiar with the area, but you can’t see. And you know that fire is coming towards you, but, again, you can’t really see it.”

Most of the cows were in pens on the north side of Clinton’s house.

“We were able to get everything moved to the south of that set of pens,” Clinton said. “We felt the further south we could move them, it would get them (the cows) out of fire danger.”

On a bluff between Clinton’s house and where the fire was, he could see the flames coming over the bluff down into the valley that goes down to the Saline River.

The one thing that surprised Clinton the most was the speed of the fire.

“The speed of that fire was incredible,” he said.

Adding to that, Clinton said he felt a total lack of control of his circumstances, which was difficult to deal with.

“I have neighbors that have lost a significant number of cows,” he said,

Fortunately, he only lost two fall calves.

“I am very fortunate,” Clinton said. “My cows came out of the fire okay. Bar S and many of our neighbors were not as fortunate as I.”

Clinton’s house and outbuildings were also spared, thanks in large part to the Saline River.

“I really respect the people who built my house,” he said.

The house sits on a hill, in the middle of a section of pasture, and is flanked on both sides by the river.

“The fire had burned all the way down to the west river bank, which is about 200 yards from my place,” Clinton said. “But it never jumped over the side where my house sits. If the river wouldn’t have been there, it (the fire) would have a clear run up to my house.”

Dealing with the aftermath

Clinton said it look him about a week to inventory everything after the fire. He noted the cows that did survive — and many of them did — were incredibly resourceful.

“They found a draw, or they found a pond, or they were able to crawl fences and get to a wheat field,” he said. “So while there was an incredibly high number of cows that were lost, I am amazed it wasn’t more. I am also amazed there wasn’t more loss of human life either, because that fire was 10 miles wide and 35 miles long. It covered a lot of ground and burned up somewhere in the neighborhood of 200,000 acres over four counties (Russell, Ellis, Osborne and Rooks).”

Clinton said as far as he knows, there was only one person who died in the fire, and one firefighter was injured.

“It’s one of those things where it could have been way worse,” Clinton said. “I think a lot of us had a lot of guardian angels that were flirting about watching over us that night.”

State of shock

Clinton said he was in a state of shock for three to four days after the fire.

“You’re just trying to survive,” he said. “But the outpouring of support — from the ag community, from out-of-state, from out-of-country — was very good.”

Clinton said the day after the fire, Dec. 16, was the hardest day for him, emotionally.

“That night (the night of the fire) you know it was bad,” he said. “But it was pitch black dark, so you couldn’t really see it. That night, we may have slept 30 minutes because you don’t know what you have, what you’ve lost.”

The next morning, Clinton drove back out to the Bar S Ranch headquarters after checking his house.

“At that point, I honestly thought we had lost the entire ranch,” he said.

The scene he drove into was akin a war zone — everything was black, there wasn’t a blade of grass anywhere — just burned out cars, homes, outbuildings and a lot of dead cattle.

As he was doing an on-site interview that morning with a television news crew outside the pasture where all of the bred heifers were located, Clinton suddenly noticed three of those heifers spring out of nowhere and walk up the fence.

“I knew that we had a hell of a lot more than three head in that pasture,” he said. “And that’s where I lost it — it was very emotional, because I was like, I’m glad you made it, but where is everything else?”

Clinton said the days after the fire were difficult because those in agriculture are not wired to ask for help.

“But you get to a point where you go okay, I need it,” he added. “To me, it was a very challenging day, but also a couple of days after that, because you don’t really know what to do next. It was just something completely out of our realm.”

Deserving of medals

Clinton said the volunteer firefighters deserve medals for what they went through that day.

“They were incredible that night in getting the fire contained as they could,” he said. “Many of those volunteer firemen had their own properties entangled in the fire itself. I definitely appreciate what they did.”

Helping hands

Clinton also commended the staff of the Midway Extension District for their efforts the day of the fire and in the days since.

“Marsha (Gier) and Karrie (Van Winkle) deserve a heck of a lot of credit for all the work they put in, getting donations and coordinating incoming hay, supplies, fencing and stuff like that while I was trying to deal with it up there,” he added.

Not an overnight fix

Clinton said there is not going to be an overnight fix from the fire.

“We have to be able to rebuild fences, let the grass come back,” he said. “And it’s going to take some time for our ponds to get back to where that smoke damage filters out a little bit. So it’s going to be a month’s long repair. And in some cases, years.”

Lessons learned Clinton said his perspective

Clinton said his perspective has changed since the fire.

“I’m a little quicker to give some grace to people,” he said. “I’m a little quicker to be more understanding.”

Two things Clinton emphasized were don’t skimp on insurance coverage and have backups of all important records.

“Many people lost those in a house fire that they can’t replace,” he said.

Clinton also recommended people get organized in such a way that if they need to get out of a situation fast, they’d know what to grab.

“That was my mistake,” he said. “Because I wasn’t organized.”

An ongoing recovery

A little more than a month has passed since the fire. Clinton said the spirits of those affected by the events of that day are better now.

“At least now we kind of have a game plan on what we need to do,” he said. “But it’s still going to take some time for people to recover.”

Clinton said if anyone wishes to help in the recovery effort, either financially, physically, or by donating supplies, they should call him at the Midway Extension District office in Russell, (785) 483-3157.