By Chris Hart
On the morning of Friday, January 23rd, at 3:20 AM, I arrived at the Safeway off Highway 101 in Port Angeles. I entered the building and went to the breakroom. When I finally sat down, I heard someone screaming from outside. Initially, I dismissed it, then heard it again, so I got up and walked down the corridor, and that is when I saw the flame from the RV. My adrenaline kicked in, because I saw a woman trying to go back into the burning vehicle.
I dialed 911 at 3:33 AM while I was outside trying to keep this woman from getting near the burning RV. As I got off the phone with 911, I noticed another person trying to get into the vehicle. The woman I was with told me that was her mom, and she started to yell at her to get away from the fire.
I didn’t want to leave them alone, but there were other vehicles near the RV. I went back inside to locate one of the other Safeway employees and found Kerry Collins, a night stocker. I told him the situation, and instructed him to tell everyone to come out to move their vehicles before I headed back outside. By this time, my heart was racing, and I was feeling overwhelmed as I tried to keep my head on straight and focus. At this point of time, the fire was already engulfing the vehicle. As I was trying to keep the woman with me calm, a huge explosion occurred and knocked both of us down. The explosion sounded like something from a war movie.
My heart was racing even more – would there be another explosion? When I went back to the mother to make sure she was alright, I felt something crawling at my legs. There were at least five pure black puppies, and two were trying to run back to the burning vehicle.
As I was trying to figure out what to do about the puppies, another huge explosion occurred and the puppies nearly knocked me to the ground, very frightened. I was scared at this moment, burning RV debris was raining down, and the smoke was now getting to me and everyone else. At 3:48 AM the Port Angeles Fire Department arrived at the scene and made sure the puppies were out of harm’s way.
By this time, I was pretty shaken up, but I knew I had to clock in for my work shift. As I tried to gather my thoughts, I would say about 30 minutes after the ordeal, I broke down crying. The events brought back memories of an incident that happened when I was a child living in a trailer park.
Approximately 90 minutes later, I was paged to come up front to make a statement. By this time, I was sweating and my heart was racing faster than normal as my anxiety kicked in. When I arrived at the primary office, I made a statement to Joan, the Person in Charge. A Clallam County Sheriff came in and wanted to know if anyone was involved. I spoke up and said, “I was first on the scene, yes I was near the fire when the explosions occurred.”
The Sheriff responded, “Since you were near the fire, your throat may be sore for a few days. We recovered several propane tanks. My advice would be to have you get checked out, just to be safe.” I thought about it and I agreed to get checked out.
As we were both walking towards the Fire Rescue Ambulance, I looked at what was left of the RV. I noticed then how close the RV was to the Safeway gas station – within at least one hundred feet. When I arrived at the Fire & Rescue vehicle, I got in and they hooked me up to a monitor just to check my blood pressure. The medic checked my lungs to make sure I did not inhale too much smoke. When that was clear, he noticed my blood pressure was high. He told me, “It is pretty common in this situation, we will keep you here until it goes down more.” I felt my mind and heartbeat slowing down, my anxiety lowering itself. When he checked it again everything was back to normal.
About a week later, I got the update that the mother suffered a slight burn on her right hand. There were two puppies unaccounted for (they were still in the RV). The daughter is doing fine; they both were placed at a shelter by the Red Cross. Several witnesses mentioned that the night before the fire someone was with the two women working on the engine.
