ELK, Wash. — Right now an Elk man is recovering in Harborview Medical Center, after being severely burned while fleeing from the Oregon Road Fire in Elk.
Justin Knutsen’s story is one of survival. He tells NonStop Local’s Cory Howard that Friday, August 18th, started as any other day. He was doing some things at his home, he says, and walked outside then noticed a giant plume of smoke in the sky. He says he asked his wife about it, and then “within I’d say 5 minutes, our phones started going off. Level 3 evacuations.”
Knutsen says the first thing he did was load up his wife and their 7 week old child in a car and told her to get to safety. He told Cory that initially he wasn’t too concerned because the way the fire was moving did not put him or his friends in harm’s way. He says after finishing several things at home, he left, but then spoke with a Spokane County Sheriff’s Deputy at a road block point, and learned that the fire had changed direction. Knutsen says his immediate concern was a friend’s family who may not know of the fire’s direction change.
He drove to the friend’s home to warn them, and then did try to leave for good. But the fire had moved too quickly. “I could hear this roar, coming closer, and it was hot. So hot.” Knutsen says he was driving quickly away, but the heat from the oncoming fire forced his truck to overheat, and shut everything off. “It just stopped,” he says. “No brakes, no gas, nothing. When it got down to 5 miles per hour I knew I had to go. I’m not going to just sit there in my truck.”
He got out and started running, with his shirt over his mouth so he could breathe, because the flames and the smoke were getting thicker and more intense. He says he couldn’t see anything, couldn’t hear anything. “And I had this voice in my head,” he says. “It was just telling me, ‘why don’t you lay down in those leaves, it’ll be over in 5 minutes. Just stop.’ And I’m like, ‘what are you talking about? Are you out of your mind? You gave up so quickly.’ so I just kept going. And then I heard this ‘beep beep’, so faint, and then again, ‘beep beep’. As soon as I heard the honking that’s when essentially the other person left. And I ran as fast as I could toward her car.”
Knutsen says when he got to the car, he was watching his skin dripping off his arms and legs. He says the only thing he could say was “I love you, I love you, I love you,” with some cursing thrown in as well.
Laughing at the memory, Knutsen says, “I remember her looking at me, and I looked at her in the eyes and she’s like ‘please stop using that language.’ And so, in the moment I thought it was appropriate to use that language, but I apologized and said, ‘I’m sorry I’m just in a lot of pain, but I do love you.'”
Knutsen says the woman kept honking as they drove, to see if anyone else was out there that needed rescuing. They didn’t find anyone. Knutsen says the air was still thick with smoke, but suddenly, “we broke through. He came into clear skies and we were safe.”
We spoke with Knutsen’s wife, Larissa, last week, who says she’s been in the touch with the family of the woman who saved her husband. Larissa says they’ll be meeting her soon, but that guardian angel herself is recovering from smoke inhalation.
If you’d like to read more about Knutsen’s story you can visit their online fundraiser here by using the link HERE.
