In Cape Horn fire, band of residents helped save neighborhood

With smoke and flames menacing their idyllic neighborhood overlooking Lake Pend Oreille, a group of homeowners chose not to evacuate with other residents at the end of Cape Horn Road.

“There were 13 of us that stayed,” said Rich Doney. “And thank God we did. We would have lost homes.”

The Cape Horn fire near Bayview, Idaho, was sparked on a Sunday, the day after Independence Day, a year ago this week. The resort hamlet and lake were bustling with holiday revelers, boaters and campers.

In hot and brutally dry conditions, and fanned by strong winds blowing across the lake, the flames quickly blew up into a dangerous and fast-moving wildfire.

Jackie and Tom Lloyd saw the smoke billowing up from behind the ridge above their home. Less than an hour later, sheriff’s deputies told them it was time get out.

“We didn’t even have time to pack up,” Jackie Lloyd said. “My dogs and my mother and her cats, that’s it. … If it went up, it went up. What else can you do?”

They saw a big tree crash through the corner of their bedroom in last November’s punishing windstorm, but the Cape Horn fire topped even that, she said.

“That’s the scariest thing I’ve ever been in,” she said. “The idea of burning … ”

In the first few hours, the fire raced downhill toward Cape Horn Road, threatening several hundred homes and cabins above the steep shoreline. Firefighters retreated toward town, wary of being trapped by a sudden shift of the wind. That night in Bayview, residents and vacationers watched the eerie glow of burning forest on the hillside above town.

“At one point … we were actually considering that we were not going to be able to save the city of Bayview. We thought that fire was going to come right straight down,” said Chief Bill Steele of the Timberlake Fire Protection District.

Had the fire swept into the homes and businesses of Bayview, “There wouldn’t have been any slowing it down,” Steele said.

At the far end of Cape Horn Road, Doney and the others were determined to help save the 46 homes inside the gated Cape Horn Estates.

“It was very surreal, it was scary. My whole life is right here, everything I own,” said Doney, who restores classic cars and collects old slot machines. “I thought I was going to lose it all.”

The decision to stay was easy, he said. “These are all friends, neighbors. We take care of each other.”

The authorities wouldn’t have been comfortable leaving just anyone behind, but the group inside Cape Horn Estates had two advantages: expertise and equipment.

One of them, Richard Powell, is a retired fire chief from Flint, Michigan. Another, Tim Sigler, is a retired Los Angeles police officer. Doney, a retired narcotics detective from Monrovia, California, relied on his experience in handling emergencies.

Still, he saw things he had never before witnessed: a tree bursting in half from the heat, the clamor of the advancing fire like a speeding freight train, fireballs from exploding propane tanks, a frightened doe fleeing with her fawns.

“I was a policeman for 30 years, I’ve been in two shootings, and I was scared to death,” Doney said of the fire.

The Dirty Baker’s Dozen, as they became known, included 11 residents and two visitors. They formed a fire brigade using a red utility trailer packed with fire hose and valves – an investment the neighborhood made years ago.

“This damn thing saved us,” Doney said of the fire wagon.

They patrolled the streets, yards and brushy hillsides of their community, dousing flare-ups from floating embers and drenching smoldering stumps. They tapped into fire hydrants and drained a 40,000-gallon water supply on the hill above their homes, while fire planes dropped sticky red retardant and helicopters dumped bucket loads of lake water on surrounding hot spots.

The fire licked at the pines next to George Ream’s summer house, and he was sure it couldn’t be saved.

“They had the helicopter dumping water right on my roof,” Ream said. “We were hiding under the eaves, it was coming down so hard.”

On one patrol, Richard Powell noticed smoke rising from the deck of a neighbor’s house. He found that a floating ember had landed and ate a hole through the boards, threatening to set the home ablaze.

Fire normally races uphill, but on Sunday it was so explosive it produced its own weather pattern, Steele said.

“We actually had fire running downhill with the wind still coming at it,” he said.

That’s a dangerous sign, and he made the call to pull his firefighters out before the flames outflanked them. But first he went to check on the group at Cape Horn Estates.

“I was the last unit out before the fire actually blew over Cape Horn Road and down below,” Steele said.

The road is the only route in or out for those who live out on the cape, and the fire loosened rocks and trees above, sending debris down a slide zone and temporarily blocking access.

“We had an escape plan,” Doney said. “We had two boats on the lake ready to go if we needed to escape.”

They labored through the night Sunday, all day Monday and through Monday night. On Tuesday, fresh fire crews arrived and moved their trucks into the neighborhood, giving the homeowners a breather.

“They were fantastic,” Doney said.

The Cape Horn homeowners lost power for five days and ran low on food and fuel for their generators. Fresh supplies came by boat from Bayview. In the evenings they gathered for potluck dinners on Doney’s deck and hatched plans for the next day.

“We had it down to a science, everybody working together,” he said. “It was great, and it made us all closer.”

The fire destroyed nine homes in all, but inside Cape Horn Estates just one storage shed burned up. A year later, green grass and brush has grown up to obscure much of the charred landscape.

A few weeks after the fire, the homeowners association threw a party. Residents who had evacuated expressed gratitude for the efforts of the 13 who stayed behind.