The Big Burn--Disaster Response Part 2
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| By National Photo Company - Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Online Catalog, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6992872 |
Aunt Beulah's Memory
"The forest fires were very bad that year. A number of men’s lives were lost in this part of the country. In one instance, Papa’s good judgment in using the “back-fire method” (only one other man stood by him in this decision) prevented serious losses in the Blue Creek area."
Beulah Stowe was born on the Stowe farm located on Tubb Hill above Coeur d'Alene Lake May 6, 1910. In memories collected by her son, Larry Strobel, in 1968, she wrote the paragraph above. Of course, she was less than four months old when the fires occurred that summer but the devastation and years of recovery certainly made an impact on her life and her family.
Beulah Stowe Strobel, Stowe Memories of Coeur d'Alene 1968 A collection of stories written by Beulah Stowe Strobel and her sister, Ruth Stowe Hogeweide, and brothers Floyd and Gordon Stowe. Larry Strobel suggested they write the stories and collected them for posterity. (Not having grown up in Idaho or meeting my aunts and uncles very often, I really enjoyed reading their stories. I especially appreciated learning about the skills my grandparents used to establish their farm and fruit orchards. MaryLynn Strickland)
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| Children of George M. and Flora Kinney Stowe 1910 Floyd, Ruth holding Beulah, Gordon, Ena, Brian |
The "Big Blowup"; The "Big Burn"
In 1910, heavy snowfall accumulated
during the winter but it didn’t linger. April was hot and spring rains were
scarce. Exceptionally dry conditions continued throughout the summer. By late
August… approximately three thousand fires were burning in northern Idaho and
western Montana.
On August 19, an electrical storm
blew through the Inland Northwest, which ignited dozens of additional blazes.
The next day, hurricane-force winds raced across the Palouse hills to create an
uncontrollable firestorm, which became known as the Big Blowup or Big Burn. Even as the big wind hit, railroad employees
were frantically trying to put out fires along the tracks and trestles.
Milwaukee Road trains traveling
through smoke and flames were collecting desperate refugees waiting to be
rescued along the railroad tracks. One
train crowded with refugees from the woods and lost towns attempted to make it
to Avery but the fire was too intense and the engineer, C.H. Marshall, stopped
the train in the safety of one of several tunnels on the Milwaukee Road.
Avery was surrounded by flames and
desperate measures were taken to evacuate residents by train. Soldiers from the
25th Infantry—the famed Buffalo Soldiers—were sent to Avery on August 17 to
assist with maintaining order and for fire control. When orders came from
Ranger Debitt and Shoshone County Sheriff H.D. McMullan to evacuate the town,
the soldiers helped women and children aboard passenger cars.
In about a half-hour the train
pulled out of Avery heading west to Tekoa, Washington. Some of the soldiers
stood on the rail car platforms to reassure passengers that they would reach
Tekoa.
The August 28 Seattle Daily
Times carried a story called “the first man to reach the outside world from
Avery, Idaho.” Thaddeus A. Roe, a forest ranger, described efforts to fight the
fire and the loss of twenty-four of his firefighters at Setzer Creek. When he
and the remaining fifty-eight firefighters realized their efforts to fight the
blaze were hopeless, they made their way to Avery as the fire ate away at their
escape route.
When Roe and his men reached Avery,
they joined with the few remaining residents and Buffalo Soldiers to start a
backfire, which quickly moved uphill and increased in intensity as it went.
Within minutes, the backfire met the wildfire as it made its way down the slope
towards town. The roar of the colliding flames was deafening, yet the crash
caused both flame-fronts to collapse and fizzle out.
The Buffalo Soldiers, the surviving firefighters, and the few remaining local Avery men who lit the backfire and doused spot fires around town throughout the night were praised as angels and heroes. Communication wires were repaired quickly and messages were transmitted that Avery had survived relatively unscathed.
Three million acres of forest in northern Idaho, western Montana, and eastern Washington were reduced to ash and burnt tree trunks. Although Avery was saved, several other towns were turned to rubble and dust, never to be rebuilt. A few towns, such as Wallace, Kellogg, and Osburn, were burned or partially burned and rebuilt.
https://www.idahomagazine.com/article/avery-spotlight-city-idaho/
Ed Pulaski
While fighting a fire at Placer Creek, about ten miles southwest of Wallace, Idaho, Ranger Pulaski and his men were quickly surrounded by flames from all directions. Without hesitation, Pulaski ordered his crew to take cover in an abandoned mine shaft. Barely outrunning the inferno, flames licked at the feet of the last men entering the mine. Having his men lay face first on the muddy tunnel floor, he draped blankets over the entrance, threatening to shoot any man who tried to flee back into the flames: “The first man who tries to leave this tunnel, I will shoot.”
All the men passed out from smoke inhalation, and as Pulaski continually threw water onto the blankets, he himself succumbed to asphyxiation. The flames passed the tunnel and as the first men began to wake, one quickly noticed their fearless leader’s lifeless body outside the tunnel entrance. He shouted back into the tunnel, “Come outside boys, the boss is dead.” Without a second’s delay, Pulaski muttered back, “Like hell he is.” Five men died in the tunnel that day from suffocation due to the thick smoke, or drowning in the mud. Pulaski was temporarily blinded, his hands scorched, and had lungs damaged from breathing the smoke. The men’s boots were burnt off their feet and the clothes that remained on their bodies were parched and tattered.
Covered with ash and mud, the men worked their way down the mountain side through Placer Creek. Though offered hot coffee and whiskey from a women’s volunteer aid team, the men were, understandably, only interested in cold water.
Caitlin M. Shain , “Ranger Pulaski and the 1910 Tale of Survival,” Spokane Historical, accessed July 27, 2025, https://spokanehistorical.org/items/show/457.
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| Cedar Snags, St. Joe NF, Idaho |
Larry's First Job--In a Logging Camp
In 1955, at age 18, Beulah's son Larry Strobel, (of Cousin Larry fame) got up the nerve to ask his uncle, John Strobel for a summer job in his logging camp. Larry did not have a burly, lumberjack physique, but John decided he would find something the scrawny, inexperienced kid could do.
In his book, When the Mill Whistle Blew Larry described the trip to the logging camp. "We passed the mine where Ed Pulaski had taken shelter with his crew during the 1910 fire."
This part of Idaho and its history were all new to Larry and he loved it. The views of the mountain ranges stretching out before him were spectacular. The air was fresh and clean and the only sound was the wind in the trees.
"We descended into a long valley. The remains of huge, burned-out cedar trees covered the valley floor. This was how a magnificent forest looks after a fire. It had been forty-five years since they burned, and they still looked like an army of huge grotesque creatures reaching for the sky."
John and Larry reached Avery where they stopped for lunch and Larry got an education about taverns in logging towns. They had t-bone steaks with all the fixings for lunch and it was delicious.
After lunch they had many more miles to go before reaching the logging camp. It was the beginning of a summer of hard work and developing physical skills. Larry learned a lot about the forest, especially the remains of the burned out trees that were still standing and needed to be felled.
At the end of the summer Larry told his Uncle John that he thought he would go enroll in North Idaho Junior College; his uncle gave him several reasons that he was making a good choice.
When the Mill Whistle Blew The Way it Was in Coeur d'Alene Country 1888-1955 by Larry Strobel, Museum of North Idaho 2010.
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| MaryLynn Strickland |
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