David Heiller
“In my head, I
heard, ‘This is it.’ I had pedaled my bicycle to school, and I pedaled against
that wind, and I knew it was tinder dry. I work in the woods,” Leustek said.
Tom Leustek
had built his house in the center of a dense pine forest in Willow River in
1980. He loves trees. “I built there one reason—for the timber,” he explained. “A
fool can see how pretty it is.”
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| Tom Leustek, holding a poster that commemorates May as Arbor Month, a time to plant trees. |
So when Tom heard the fire call, and felt the south wind, and,
saw the dense smoke, he knew.
When Tom got to the fire hall, he jumped into a fire truck with
Bill Kenyon and Bruce Bohaty. They raced south to the Eva Marcus farm, but the
fire was past it already, and into the pine forest, heading north, straight
toward Leustek’s home.
They turned around and drove down the Old Sawmill Road, past
Tom’s house, as far as the power line. They met a wall of fire, flames jumping from
tree top to tree top, pushed on by that terrible wind.
“It was obvious we were going to do nothing,” Tom says. “Bill
Kenyon said, ‘Let’s get the hell out of here,’ and that’s what we did.”
They turned around, and drove back through fire, back to Tom’s
house. They pulled up by Tom’s garage, to make a last stand.
A
stone’s throw to the west of Tom’s garage lay the School Forest, 40 acres of
jack pines that were planted 25 years ago. Tom knew those jack pines as well as
anybody, probably better. He and his environmental studies class at Willow River
High School had spent the past winter thinning the School Forest, taking out 23
rows of trees, a quarter mile to each row.
“In my yard and in that School Forest I’ve got a lot of labor
of love,” Tom said.
Standing by his garage, with his white pines at his back, some
of them 100 years old, and the school forest in front, Tom watched the fire
bear down.
But suddenly,
a miracle occurred, one of many miracles that for most people transformed last Thursday’s
inferno from tragedy to relief. The fire veered to the west, skirting Leustek’s
house, and two other houses. It swept past like a tornado, missing them.
“Apparently the school forest inferno was pulling so much
oxygen from the east,” Tom tried to explain. “God’s wind just blew it away from
our buildings.”
“That’s what
it was, it was luck or divine intervention.”
The fire raged on, and the firemen chased it and fought it and
finally beat it. The fire won the battle for Agnes Jaros’ trailer home, and
Lyle Bakke’s basement home, and 302 acres of trees. The fire fighters won the
war.
At first the victory seemed hollow to Tom. He lost his School
Forest, and he is afraid for those white pines. They are very sensitive to
heat, he said. “I don’t look for most of my white pines to survive.”
The day after the fire, Tom put a for sale sign up in front of
his house.
“If I can sell, I will,” he said at first. “To me, I would have
been better off if it (the house) went up.”
But after some thought, Tom’s feelings changed. “It’s obvious
to me that the house didn’t burn because it was God’s will,” he said. “He wants
me to stay in Willow River, and that’s what I intend to do.”
If you love trees like Tom Leustek does, you can understand his
sorrow. He lost a part of his family, in a spiritual sense.
And consider this: With its wide rows so neatly trimmed by Tom
and his students, the School Forest drew the flames away from Tom’s house, and
from half a dozen others. If the fire hadn’t changed directions to the west,
into the School Forest, at that time, it could easily have swung northeast. It
might have jumped County Road 43 to the trees around the gas station and three
10,000 gallon fuel tanks. If those had blown up, the fire might not have been contained
for miles.
So in our long list of thank yous to the people who helped halt
disaster at the doorstep of the houses in Willow River, let’s add one for the
Willow River School Forest. May your trees grow again.
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