Friday July 11, 2014 – day 7 of our ‘epic summer road trip’ – started lazily like most days had been going. We were departing from Sparks Marina RV Park after a previous evening of later arrival, dinner, and a quick load of laundry. I had been a bit annoyed lately by our 1974 Airstream’s sewage system – a bit of an precarious drip from a cap with a 40-year old gasket and two valves that needed replacing, but for the most part the camper was in excellent operational shape. The truck had been running well also: I unhitched it the night before (Thursday) to make a run to a WalMart and check for any spare RV sewage caps, which they did not have in the size I needed. I bought ice cream instead.
Before we officially set our cruise on the open roads of Nevada, we fueled up in Reno in preparation for crossing the state on Highway 50, also known as “The Loneliest Road.” Our hope was to make it near Great Basin National Park and then the next day to Arches National Park (near Moab, Utah) to meet our 2 night reservation. Then on to Grand Junction, Castle Rock / Denver, and the rest of our trip to Iowa and Wisconsin to visit family.
While underway about 11:15am, we happened upon Sand Mountain, about 45 minutes east of Fallon, Nevada. We drove up the long lane to the sand to check it out. The day was hot in the mid-90’s, but not at all muggy. Once at the Sand Mountain parking lot, we shut down the truck for about 30 minutes and spoke to a couple of quad riders and two guys driving the Lincoln Highway from east to west (one guy from Norway the other his friend from Baltimore). We were there just in time to see those two travelers para-gliding from the top of the sand mountain to the parking lot. The girls had a snack / lunch and – in hindsight – I didn’t notice anything wrong with the truck.
We departed east from Sand Mountain and had the cruise set about 64mph, with the truck’s engine running about 1,800rpm for maximum fuel efficiency (as maximum as one can get while towing a 5,500lb trailer). All of the gauges monitoring the truck’s major systems were normal given other readings we had noticed on the trip (exhaust gas temperature / pyrometer, boost, transmission temperature, rear differential temperature, and fuel pressure). In hindsight, the fuel pressure gauge was jumping around and hovering a bit lower than normal, but we had noticed this during earlier days of our trip and did not see any issues under the hood or notice anything under the body of the truck.
We passed a little township and DOT maintenance yard called Cold Springs where I saw a small UPS delivery truck (a F-250 with cube on the back) prepare to come onto the road behind us. Once he was on the road he followed us for about ½ of a mile then passed us when the road was clear. After he passed us on the 2-lane highway, he pulled off to the shoulder and began to flag us down. (The location was at 39.474809, -117.813757). Lyndsey and I both thought that he may be in need of help. I pulled our rig off the road and slowed quickly on the wide gravel shoulder. As soon as the truck came to a stop, we all saw smoke coming from the hood of our engine. I quickly turned off the engine (which was running just fine), jumped out of the truck (in my socks), grabbed the Airstream keys, and went back to fetch the fire extinguisher. The UPS guy stated that while he was following us he could smell “gas” which gave me pause since our truck was a diesel. While on the passenger side of the truck (which was the side the Airstream’s door was on), I saw small pieces of something dropping out of the engine compartment on fire. I put those pieces out quickly while they were on the ground. Then I moved over to the driver’s side, pulled the hood latch inside the truck’s cab, and thought about opening the hood (which the UPS man was advising), but my instinct was to not do so because of so much smoke – I feared burning my hand on the latch at the front. I then stuck the hose of the fire extinguisher inside of the front driver’s side wheel well, trying to hit whatever flames were inside the engine compartment. I could tell that the fire was definitely on that side, but could not see the source of the flames. The fire extinguisher ran out. Then I knew there was a larger problem at hand. I grabbed my shoes, wallet, keys, and phone, then ran back and grabbed the dog out of his kennel, let him loose to run to Lyndsey and the girls in the ditch, and grabbed his dog leash. The UPS man said, “What do you want?” as in what do you want to save… we didn’t fully understand that at the time. In hindsight, the only additional thing I would have grabbed was our digital SLR camera – not to save the camera, but to have the photos from the first week of our vacation. We all pulled back about 100 yards from the truck and I snapped a photo of the engine compartment and windshield starting to be covered in flames. Lyndsey had one shoe-less girl on each hip and I had the dog on his leash.
There were many blessings in disguise here already: the UPS man flagging us down was no coincidence – we didn’t even notice any smells, heat, flames, changes in truck operation, etc. If he wouldn’t have flagged us down who knows how large the fire would have been before we had the understanding of a need to pull over.
As we were there, standing on the side of the road with our rig on fire and nothing more than the clothes on our backs and our complete health (praise God, no injuries!), more blessings began to open up. Some people drove on by at the beginning of the fire, but some wonderful people stopped. A younger man (Chris? driving a maroon Honda civic) stopped and helped slow down the traffic. He wisely advised us to move even farther back in case of an explosion. Our new friends – the Cliffords – also stopped to offer assistance. They were traveling west (opposite of us) back home to Fallon: Deb was being picked up by her son Eric after Deb was helping at a church camp. They offered to have the girls (Lyndsey, Adah, Lydia) all stay in the cooler temperatures of their travel trailer which was in tow behind their pickup. I stayed outside with our dog Samson to take photos, keep Samson occupied, and talk to others who had stopped. By this time we had halted the light traffic.
While it was difficult to watch, the fire itself was epic. It burned with thick black smoke – remember that we had filled up with diesel that morning and with both tanks full we were capable of carrying 85 gallons. The flames at times reached 2-3 times higher than the roof of the truck. Once the fire had reached the Airstream, the camper’s interior ignited and the exterior aluminum roof, framing, and sides melted down quickly. The top rear panel of the roof peeled back like a tuna can being opened up. While we were expecting a huge mushroom-cloud explosion from the fire, the only explosions were from the 10 tires (four truck, four Airstream, and one spare for each) exploding from the heat and pressure. The safety valves on the full LP / propane tanks on the front of the camper did their jobs: When experiencing too much heat or pressure, these valves release, which resulted in a stream of flame like a torch coming from the tops of the tanks.
With the local maintenance shop nearby, a worker from the Nevada Department of Transportation was one of the first officials on the scene and he helped hold the westbound traffic. Due to our remote location the volunteer fire department from Fallon was not able to reach us until about 1 hour after the fire had started. By the time the firemen arrived the truck and camper were more than total losses. The fire burnt out anything on the truck that was not steel, including melting the aluminum rims and fuel tank (which looked like a stream of molten lava afterwards). The truck’s cab looked like it has been through hell itself and even the frame of the truck bent under the heat, something like a swayback on an old horse (saggy in the middle of the back) A very friendly and calm Nevada State Trooper was the one to take statements and write the official accident report.
Our new friends were already taking care of us while I was talking to officials and onlookers: Eric and Deb had been making phone calls to friends and their church back in Fallon. They ended up taking all of us in their crew cab pickup back to their home – even though we were complete strangers! They “happened” (i.e. divine appointment) to have a double kennel which could be used for our dog, Samson. Deb had arranged for us to meet her friend Starla who was the manager of the local thrift shop, Thrifty Finds. Deb drove us to the thrift shop while Starla kept the shop open later than normal hours so we could pick out a few things for the next couple of days. When we were at the counter ready to check out, Starla and her employees wouldn’t let us pay – they gave us a duffel bag, one toy each for the girls, and enough clothing for all of us for 2 days! Deb and her husband Danny were awesome enough to keep Samson overnight and their church even put us up in a Fallon hotel. Our family had a nice sit-down dinner at the restaurant attached to the hotel then we gave the girls “tubbies” (baths) and put them down for bed. Deb came back and again chauffeured our family wherever we needed to go by taking Lyndsey to WalMart to get toiletries, carseats, and a few snacks. When Lyndsey returned to the hotel room we looked for airline tickets and found some very reasonably priced one-way seats from Reno, NV to Seattle scheduled for the next day.
On Saturday (July 12) we packed up our things and Lyndsey walked over to Safeway to pick up some lunch. Deb came and again took us back to her home so we could print off some of Lyndsey’s identification documents from home: All of her wallet items were burned in the fire and we had our friend Joe get into our Tacoma house and take photos of Lyndsey’s passport, birth certificate, our marriage license, and social security card. Based on what we found on the TSA website, we had hoped it would be enough to get her through security and on the flight. Samson, the dog was another story…
We left for the Reno airport, again having the awesome Clifford family drive us, which was over an hour from Fallon. We wanted to be there plenty early so that we could make sure Lyndsey could get through security and so that we had some flexibility if something came up with the dog. It was our first time flying a dog. The less-than-pleasant United desk worker informed us that we needed at least a 24 hour window for the dog to be able to fly with us. This was a challenge since we booked the tickets about 18 hours before departure. On Friday night when I booked our tickets I tried to call the “Pet Safe” program 1-800 number but it would not work from our hotel room for some reason (even when the United 1-800 phone number worked fine), so the dog did not have an official space on the flight in the cargo area. I tried the Pet Safe number right there from the airport and it worked. The Pet Safe representative said that it was not uncommon for them to book pets with less than 24 hours and that we should not worry. The one non-negotiable was that we needed papers indicating that the dog was healthy enough to fly and that he had current rabies vaccination. Of course, we had neither.
Deb, Lyndsey, Adah, and Lydia stayed at the airport while Danny, Samson, and I drove to a nearby veterinarian (Klaich Animal Hospital). The animal hospital was very accommodating – especially Josie at the front desk and Dr. Mike Likes – and it was apparent that they were trying to get us in and out as soon as possible. We are very thankful for their expediency! We received the papers, Samson had a fresh dose of rabies vaccine, and we drove back to the airport.
We said our goodbyes to Deb and Danny, which were short and rushed but also very sincere. We could not have done so much is such a short amount of time without them. It was amazing to see God’s saints being mobilized to help us and we are forever grateful.
After some technical difficulties (and an employee’s first time through the process) I checked in the dog. The rest of us were able to check in and the airplane was actually 20 minutes delayed. This was probably the first and last time we were thankful for an airline delay! After explaining the situation to TSA and showing them some burned up truck and camper photos, we made it through security without incident (although Lyndsey did get a little extra patting down). We made it to the gate and took a deep breath.
The two flights (Reno to San Francisco then San Francisco to Seattle) were thankfully uneventful. Our buddy Joe picked us up from the airport in Seattle in our other friends’ Navigator SUV (Matt and Nadine) so we had plenty of space to strap in the new car seats.
Now that we’ve had time to reflect (it has been a week since the incident as I write this) I sometimes wonder what would have been if I could have opened the hood to put out the fire or quickly unhitched the Airstream so it would not burn up or even if I would have checked under the hood at every stop to make sure the truck was functioning properly. Those thoughts are quickly diminished by the realization that our whole family is safe. I’m glad that our instincts were to move away from the blaze when I exhausted the contents of the fire extinguisher.
During our vacation we were just talking about how we would likely keep the truck until it "died." Little did we know it would be such an epic and dramatic death!
In summary, what could be defined as tragedy to some has truly been defined as blessing to our family. We experienced God’s protection by having the UPS driver flag us down before we even knew there was a problem. We experienced God’s provision by having Deb and her son Eric stop for us, take us to their home, drive us around, provide a hotel room for us, hug us, and smile with us. We experienced the blessing of living in God’s kingdom, where the saints are mobilized to take care of others. We are even experiencing God’s peace as we have so many people offering to help us out in whatever way they can. We are so thankful to the Lord and so thankful to so many that have been praying for our protection. We are sure many other lessons will come from this event and hope that others can join us in seeing the “beauty from ashes” in this situation. Even though we have experienced some challenges, we truly believe this is the “Year of the Lord’s Favor” as depicted in Isaiah 61.
The Year of the Lord’s Favor 61 The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me,
because the Lord has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim freedom for the captives
and release from darkness for the prisoners,[a]
2 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor
and the day of vengeance of our God,
to comfort all who mourn,
3 and provide for those who grieve in Zion--
to bestow on them a crown of beauty
instead of ashes,
the oil of joy
instead of mourning,
and a garment of praise
instead of a spirit of despair.
They will be called oaks of righteousness,
a planting of the Lord
for the display of his splendor.