David Heiller
The scene didn’t make sense, last Friday morning in Willow River.
The air had that early April feeling to it, nippy and fresh and
crystal clear. The sun had a brighter touch too, as it warmed the frost off the
brown lawns, and warmed the robins that jumped from tree to tree above the
grass, already hoping for earthworms.
But smoke curled above the houses in Willow River, clouding this
bright spring morning and all the hope that it should have brought along. The
smoke oozed from the rafters and walls and basement of a frame home, once
white, now blackened and broken.
A dozen or so firemen from Willow River and Sturgeon Lake stood
outside the shell of a house. They stood in pockets, here and there. They stood
alongside the hole in the ground where a backhoe pawed through blackened
debris. Their faces were gray with soot and smoke, their eyes hung with a
sleepless night. And they seemed to stoop, in a barely perceptible way that is
brought on by more than fatigue.
No one said much. Their work was done, work that had started with a fire call at 1:30 in the morning,
eight hours earlier. They had arrived at a fire that made the sky glow orange,
and after five hours, they had extinguished the fire inside. They had done
their job.
But their shoulders
sagged, and they said little.
Outside the burned home, a snowmobile sat with melted frame and
windshield, some 30 feet from the home. There was a tricycle in the yard a bit
further back, and behind the child’s toy, a child who had lived in the house until
the fire, Mike Olesen. They had found Mike at 8:20.
Pine County Sheriff John Kozisek and his deputies stood in the
basement of the home, digging through the black rubble. They raked and
shoveled, stepping back every few minutes as the backhoe took another bite.
Like the firemen who watched from above, they said little as they worked. Their
faces had that same blank look.
People started arriving to look in on the scene. A little boy rode
back and forth on his bicycle. Children came, looking on as they held the hands
of mothers and dads. They saw the tricycle and the white bag and the firemen
and the backhoe and the sheriff digging relentlessly in the basement.
The sun rose higher
in the sky. Sweat broke out on the faces of the firemen in their heavy coats.
Sheriff Kozisek unzipped his coveralls, took off his shirt and threw it into
the patrol car, then zipped the coveralls back up and returned to the basement.
Television crews
arrived from Duluth, cameramen dressed in blue jeans and news reporters in three
piece suits and $200 dresses.
At 10 o’clock, the
sheriff found the body of the family dog. A half hour later they found Michael’s
mother, Debra Olesen.
They dug and sifted on. Kozisek wouldn’t stop. He had to find little Douglas Olesen. Cars drove by, people
looked on. Some gawked as curious bystanders, some stared in disbelief. Others
cried, shoulders shaking.
By afternoon, the sun had turned the crisp April morning into a stale
afternoon. Smoke still curled from the top of the house, on the north side
which was still standing. Kozisek and his crew finally quit at four o’clock.
The firemen returned to the station. People sat on porches next door to the
burned house. Others stood on the sidewalk across the street. Cars still drove
by slowly. The little boy who had been riding his bike in the morning rode by
once more, as if patrolling the street. Flames broke out in the top of the
house again, in defiance to the firemen and the sheriff. Two men from the fire
hall came down and hosed the flames out.
Back
at the fire hall, most of the firefighters stood by their lockers, or sat in
the lounge. They should have gone home to bed, but they couldn’t. They talked
about the heat of the fire, and the layout of the house, and how it might have
started and spread. They talked about Kozisek. They talked about Debra and
Michael and Douglas. “They probably didn’t know what hit them,” someone said. “Once that smoke gets you, one or two
breaths and that’s it.”
The sun set on Willow River. The firemen went home to their wives and
children. Sheriff Kozisek went home to get a good night’s rest. He would be
digging again in the morning looking for Doug. The little boy on the bike went
home, the gawkers and friends and family and neighbors and reporters went home.
And
alone, in the dark, they cried.
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