Fairgrounds offers sanctuary to fire evacuees

When mandatory evacuations for Walking Horse Lane and Early Dawn Road and adjacent areas near Big Arm were announced last Thursday afternoon by the Lake County Sheriff’s Department, Vicki Holmberg, Polson Fairgrounds caretaker, was immediately on the phone with people seeking shelter for their animals and places to park their campers and RVs. When she wasn’t on the phone, she was showing people where to put their animals.

By Friday morning 32 cows, 22 horses, nine chickens and numerous dogs and cats were bunking at the fairgrounds.

According to Holmberg, when she spoke to Rick Wies, who was calling about a place for the family's horses, he told her they had 18 horses and a two-horse trailer. Holmberg posted that info on Facebook and received 30 offers to help from around the state.

Rick and his wife, Cathy, who own Walking Horse Ranch on Walking Horse Road, were notified they needed to evacuate between 2 and 2:30 p.m. on Thursday. Residents of the area since 1984, they had never had to evacuate before.

“Actually, it’s a nice facility. We appreciate the fairgrounds and the help,” Rick said.

David Graham and Tracy Wall transported a dozen of the couple’s horses to the fairgrounds where they were housed in stalls next to each other. Rick said the fire crew was keeping watch over the remainder.

“We’re hoping it’s just a couple of days,” he said. “Sounds like they're getting a pretty good handle on the fire.”

Maryl and Donna Vance, who also live on Walking Horse Road, were notified they needed to evacuate about 1 p.m. on Thursday afternoon. They brought their horses to the fairgrounds but left their cows.

Members of the Fire Management Team told them “cattle will kind of move out of the way but horses panic,” Maryl said.

The fire was some distance from their place, with some flat land and a ridge between them and the blaze.

“Yesterday, it was billowing pretty good,” Donna said Friday morning, but as the Vances spoke, a few raindrops fell.

The couple has never had to evacuate before, although it was close with the Elmo fire last year. They also thought they might need to evacuate about 10 years ago, when there was a big fire in Irvine Flats.

The Vances brought their camper and parked next to the corral where their horses were nibbling hay.

Nancy Cameron was stuffing hay in a net for her horses at the fairgrounds. She and her husband also live on Walking Horse Lane, and on Friday she was watching information that said that area was on fire. So she called her husband, who had remained at home.

“There’s smoke down there, but I don’t see anything,” her husband said on the phone. “I’ll go check and call you back.”

He called her back. “No, I don’t even see any flames. Nobody is down there,” he reported. “No, it’s not on fire, sweetheart.”

She added that there was more of a concentration of resources “on the other side. There’s nobody at the end of our road, so we feel like we’re being left to burn.”

“This will be our third night out, and we could have been home,” Cameron added. “My horses wouldn’t have had to be upset; they would have been in their pasture. So yeah, I’m not happy with the information we’re getting.”

“Vicki has been so nice,” Cameron said of the fairgrounds’ caretaker. “She’s just a sweetheart. When I went home to take a shower yesterday morning, I brought her back some freezer jam and a bottle of wine.”

By Monday, the sheriff's office had changed the evacuation status for Niarada to a pre-evacuation warning, so those in the area could return to their homes. Flathead County also lifted the evacuation notice from Browns Meadow Pass to Highway 28.

However, since the fire could still pose a threat, residents were advised to keep livestock out of the area until it was downgraded to “ready” status, which is the current status for the town of Elmo.

For more fire information on fires burning across Montana, visit www.MTFireInfo.org.