‘Pounding on doors’: Evacuees recall fleeing fast-moving flames

Fire crews head up East Pages Lane as a fire burns on the hill East of Centerville early in the morning on Friday, Aug. 30, 2019. 27 homes have been evacuated in the Centerville area as of 5 AM. | Colter Peterson, Deseret News

BOUNTIFUL — Helen Day was sound asleep when she got the warning to wake up and “get up and get dressed” as fast as she could.

Minutes away from her Bountiful home on Sereno Circle, two houses were being destroyed near 1000 North and 1000 East by the Gun Range Fire, which had been sparked by an abandoned campfire in the early hours of Friday morning.

The 101-year-old woman thought one of her sons had come to wake her but soon realized it was her neighbor, Keith McMullin, CEO of Deseret Management Corp.

Once she was ready, she said, McMullin dropped her off at an evacuation center and called her daughter-in-law, where she waited for her family to pick her up.

“I was right in the middle of it,” Day said.

“There were three homes that were burned, and I don’t know how many more,” she added.

Day is just one of the hundreds of Bountiful and Centerville residents forced to evacuate from their homes as the flames spread through the dark, early morning hours.

Centerville Police Chief Paul Child called the wildfire an “evolving situation.”

“This was a rapidly moving fire. It was moving with speed. We had high winds that were driving the fires going into the residential areas. So it was imperative to get people out of their homes as quickly as possible,” he said.

Amid the confusion as Day reached the center, most of her family had not yet been alerted that she had evacuated. She said police, along with her grandson, went to her home and knocked down her door when no one answered.

“I’ll have to have a new front door,” she said.

Now with the help from her family and neighbors, she said she was “getting along” just fine.

Though the wildfire had destroyed three homes and damaged five, no injuries were reported, according to Bountiful Police Lt. Dave Edwards. The U.S. Forest Service confirmed Friday afternoon the fire was human caused, apparently started by a campfire that was burning near the Bountiful “B” about 1 a.m.

At 10 a.m., Centerville evacuations were lifted while evacuations for Bountiful remained in place.

Bountiful officials tweeted that the evacuations will be reassessed Saturday morning “to determine if it is safe to open them.”

Bountiful City Councilwoman Kate Bradshaw was glad to see that so many resources were activated and couldn’t be happier with the community response.

“There’s nothing quite like being awoken with someone pounding on your door,” said Bradshaw, who was asleep when officials alerted her about the wildfire.

Bradshaw, who lives in a “soft closure zone” on 650 East, then noticed she had missed multiple calls from the city.

Bradshaw said it was difficult to see the fire from her home because there was so much dark, heavy smoke around her neighborhood.

She said they were lucky to have minimal impact on their street, adding that her husband, a teacher at Viewmont High School, ended up teaching class that day.

“It was unreal,” she said.

Contributing: Heather McShane, Gretel Kauffman

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