Western Railroad Discussion > Wildfire forcing the Evacuation of Roosevelt, WA

Not exactly sure how this affecting the BNSF yet, but the town of Roosevelt is under mandatory evacuation due to wild fire. Roosevelt is the location where garbage is unloaded from trains and hauled off to a nearby landfill.

http://www.kgw.com/story/news/2015/08/04/wash-town-under-evacuation-order-due-wildfire/31140629/

Ted Curphey
Ontario, OR

Looks like No. 28 (4) made it by there.
Dave

About an hour's drive on Washington SR-14 west of Roosevelt the dry grass range land was also on fire on Tuesday.  Around 1 PM yesterday a fire started which quickly grew to over 170 acres.  The news article doesn't mention the BNSF but since SR-14 was closed it's likely that it could have burned southward to the R-O-W and the Columbia River.  Check out http://www.katu.com/news/local/KATU-viewer-captures-Wishram-fire-in-stunning-photos-320718111.html?tab=gallery&c=y&img=0 to see 17 fire-related photos taken by Wishram resident Kevin Evans.  The KATU news article is at http://www.katu.com/news/local/KATU-viewer-captures-Wishram-fire-in-stunning-photos-320718111.html and a KPTV article at http://www.kptv.com/story/29709558/brush-fire-shuts-down-sr-14-between-dallesport-and-maryhill.

Following a mandatory evacuation order the residents of Roosevelt had a half-hour's drive NNW to the Bluebird town ( http://www.bickleton.org/ ) of Bickleton to find shelter established at the local school.  Had the fire happened decades earlier the residents would have only needed to board the Roosevelt ferry for a quick trip across the Columbia River to find shelter in Arlington, Oregon (the birthplace of Doc Severinsen, Johnny Carson's musical director).  I had a ride on that ferry one morning in the early '70s courtesy of the BN.  "Tricky Dicky" Chavez, who was running westward ahead of me, put 'em in the ditch at Cliffs and we got put on release at Roosevelt (haven't figured out yet where the hotel and food was which is required for a release). After a couple hours the day operator came on duty and he took us to breakfast in Arlington as soon as the ferry (a tugboat with a small barge) started running for the day. The river crossing was so rough that the long-time captain just waited on the Oregon side for us to eat breakfast and upon delivering us back to the Washington shore declared "that's all for today, boys" and promptly tied up the ferry.

Funny seeing the name "Tricky Dicky" mentioned here - what a character that guy was. Guess he and brother Al "Slow and Easy" Chavez are both retired and long gone from Wishram and the railroad these days.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/05/15 15:17 by PCX.

PCX Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Funny seeing the name "Tricky Dicky" mentioned
> here - what a character that guy was. Guess he and
> brother Al "Slow and Easy" Chavez are both retired
> and long gone from Wishram and the railroad these
> days.

Dick has been retired for several years and I think Al is also retired.  I did not know Al because, as I recall, he was a GN hire who moved to Wishram after the BN merger and I had left Wishram before he arrived.  Dick was 33 men ahead of me on the SP&S roster and he was promoted to engineer on 06/22/68.
 
As a relatively new fireman I marked up on #102-103 “The Rocket” at Wishram with Roscoe Vance to learn how to run a freight train. I had previously run nine-car steam-powered passenger trains on the 2.3% grade of the SP&S Vernonia branch (due to a local UTU no-fireman-seniority-established agreement which weekly pulled me off of my Portland Roundhouse hostler helper job because the SP&S had no steam-qualified firemen) so I was familiar with the use of train air (including retainers) on a low speed couple-trains-a-week branch line.  But a 60-80 car time card local mixed train working against wait orders on a TT&TO main line mile-a-minute subdivision was a whole different ball game. The Oregon Trunk was the place to learn and Roscoe was revered as a good-train-handling teacher.
 
When I showed up at Wishram to go to work on the nighttime mixed train I discovered that Roscoe was on vacation and my hoghead was "Tricky Dicky" whom I had never met.  As you said, Dick was a character!  He ran the Alco RS3s to the train from the roundhouse and promptly announced that he was done for the night, whereupon he disappeared to the second unit!  As I recall, he returned to the head end at Redmond, well after daylight and 134 miles out of Wishram, quite refreshed after several hours of sleep.  Fortunately the head brakeman (whom I had also never met) stayed awake and offered helpful information – perhaps out of a desire for self-preservation!
 
Dick’s retirement moved my fellow SP&S 700 hogger Greg Kamholz to the #1 position on the BNSF Pacific Fifth seniority roster.  Greg was promoted on 05/26/69, shortly after returning from tooting a tuba for Uncle Sam in South Korea.  Having turned 73 years young last month he is the only SP&S-hired engineman still working and will complete his 51st year in October.
 
To get back to the original subject of this thread, the Roosevelt fire grew immensely to over 1,700 acres by Wednesday afternoon thanks to high winds.  The town-of-Roosevelt mandatory evacuation was cancelled around 11 AM Wednesday but six hours later another mandatory evacuation was ordered for 25 homes in very sparsely settled eastern Klickitat County as reported at http://www.katu.com/news/local/Around-300-evacuated-by-fast-burning-grass-fire-in-Columbia-Gorge-Roosevelt-Washington-320743751.html.