MALDEN, Wash. – Todd Deckard, 62, was on the phone with his brother when he started smelling smoke.
Quickly, he gathered his guns and his money box and made his way out of the house.
It wasn’t long before the sea of black smoke and red flames crested the hill and made its way through the town.
“In 45 minutes, it was in town eating houses,” Deckard said of that day, Sept. 7, 2020.
Five years ago on Labor Day, the Babb Road fire consumed much of Malden and neighboring community Pine City, after a windstorm blew a tree branch into an Avista power line. While no deaths were reported, the fire burned 80% of the towns’ homes and multiple rail bridges on the John Wayne Trail over Pine Creek.
Chandelle Frick, town clerk and treasurer for Malden, said the town’s population has fallen from 200 to 145 people since the fire.
She said at least 25 new homes, out of the 120 homes that were destroyed, have been built for residents – nine of those by the Mennonite and Amish communities.
Still, residents are coping with the effects to this day.
“It’s just sickening. This whole block used to look like a city park, and now it don’t,” Deckard said.
Deckard, born and raised in Malden, was a recipient of one of the homes the Amish and Mennonites built a year after the fire. While he says he’s been making the most of what he has, the house has been a consistent reminder of what he lost in the fire.
“I lost my garage. I had three other boats, and they melted into aluminum glob. I had a yard business. I had all kinds of things,” Deckard said.
He’s not the only one who feels that way.
Jessica Landry is now also living in one of the houses the Amish and Mennonite communities built for Malden, but every Labor Day brings back the same devastated feeling she felt five years ago.
“I’m still in shock,” Landry said.
Landry recalled she was with her parents and her partner’s niece having a family barbecue down the streetwhen she got a call from her partner that he and his dad were being evacuated from their home.
Landry said they had all been living at the same house.
“I was freaking out. I was more worried about them and about the animals, because we had about six dogs at the time,” Landry said.
She said her partner put all their animals inside their Yukon and urged his dad to leave. Her partner stayed back, frantically knocking on all the neighbors’ doors to make sure everybody else on the block had already evacuated, she said.
But it wasn’t until the next day that they realized how serious the fire was after seeing news updates.
“Half of Malden was gone,” Landry said.
“We also didn’t think that ours would be burnt down until the very next day, when the news covered it, and then they did a fly-by, and that’s when I saw that the house was gone,” she said.
Ever since, the fear of another fire taking over the town lingers in the back of her mind.
“There’s a lot of people that still have PTSD when it comes to that. I know my partner does,” Landry said. “We still get that heightened awareness and struggle. Every year it’s like, how can you say a happy anniversary to a thing that wasn’t happy?”
Avista settlement ends five years after tragedy
Earlier this year, Avista agreed to pay millions of dollars for claims related to the fire. An estimated 40% of the people who lost homes were uninsured.
Fifty-one insurance companies and a total of 128 individuals joined to file a total of 11 civil lawsuits that named both Avista Utilities and CN Utility Consulting, which was the company Avista had hired for “vegetative management services.”
The Washington State Department of Natural Resources determined the fire was sparked when a damaged branch from a ponderosa pine tree broke and fell into an Avista distribution line.
The DNR report indicated that because of the proximity of the tree to the line and its condition, “a nearer inspection of the tree should have revealed” the limb’s “failure potential.”
Avista disputed that DNR finding, but in its quarterly filing earlier this year to the U.S. Security and Exchange Commission, the company said it had reached a settlement in April with most of those claims arising from the Babb Road fire.
“The total liability is $27 million of which the company is responsible for $21 million and CN Utility Consulting is responsible for $6 million,” according to Avista’s filing.
It also appears that Avista’s insurance covered its $21 million payment “resulting in no impact on net income.”
Asked to clarify the situation, Avista spokesperson Lena Funston said in a message that Avista “signed a confidentiality agreement with the parties involved that does not allow us to speak about the settlement.”
“I can confirm that there are no outstanding claims,” she continued. She referred all other questions to the form the company filed with the SEC.
Both Landry and Deckard said they got money back from the Avista settlement. While neither disclosed how much, they each acknowledged they’ve got enough to help them make upgrades in their new homes.
“The structure is good. There’s just some things that should have been worked on a little bit more. The AC unit, to me, anyway, sounds like a diesel truck going up,” Landry said. “Just some minor things that we’re actually finally able to fix that we weren’t able to.”
Deckard said he’s been trying to look for a new floorboard, explaining it can be hard to get around the house with his wheelchair, without going around in circles. Still, he said he’s trying to find the most affordable option in case an emergency comes up.
“You never know the rainy day that’s going to come along and you’re going to need a bunch of money,” Deckard said.
A work in progress
A couple of years ago, former town clerk Micki Harnois sent a survey to the people of Malden, asking what they wanted to see through their recovery efforts. The top three answers were a post office, internet and trees.
“The No. 1 thing was the post office, because they had one here forever, and it burned up. And so to get the mail, they had to go 6 miles into Rosalia to mail a letter or get their mail. After that, we finally put a drop box so they could at least mail something here,” Harnois said.
Since then, she said the town has made additional upgrades, including a new building that combines a fire station, post office and town hall, as well as a new library and a new well to provide water to the town and beyond.
Harnois said Mayor Dan Harwood was able to bring in about $17 million in grants for those improvements, emphasizing he’s been a key leader in the town’s quick recovery efforts.
Frick said they hoped to honor their progress through a town festival Saturday afternoon outside the new community building, which opened in May and features a library, food pantry and event center.
“It’s a celebration of bringing the community together and just recognizing the resilience after five years of very hard work rebuilding our community after a devastating fire,” Frick said Saturday at the festival.
The festival drew about 60 people at its peak and included live music from the local musical group, Theresa Edwards Band, and a free lunch from Longhorn Barbecue, Frick said.
Community members also enjoyed a pie eating contest, gunny sack races and cornhole.
Harwood, who took over as mayor a few months after the fire, wore a button on his shirt Saturday that said “I LOVE MALDEN,” with a red heart representing, “LOVE.”
He said the last five years has been a “huge amount of work,” but the town council, residents and other entities, liked the Washington State Department of Commerce, worked well together.
He said he and the community are extremely humbled by the large and small donations from people and organizations.
For example, right before Malden celebrated its first Christmas after the fire, Harwood said people in a car drove from house-to-house to donate Oreo cookies and envelopes with a $50 bill inside.
“Those people have forever opened their hearts and given to this town, and for that, we are extremely thankful,” Harwood said of the donations that poured into the community.
Meanwhile, Scott Carlon, of Pine City, was one of the raffle winners Saturday, and chose a fire extinguisher as his prize.
After walking away with the extinguisher, a woman yelled, “We don’t want anymore fires.” Carlon’s wife also won Star Wars-themed drinking tumblers.
Carlon said they lost their historic 1929 brick bungalow in the 2020 blaze. He said his father grew up in Pine City and he and his wife had moved there, spending the next four years restoring the 5-acre property.
The fire ripped through the forest behind their home, came down the hill and destroyed the house shortly after they were done fixing up the place.
Carlon, 65, said he filled the house with historic Pine City memorabilia and his family history.
“It was like a museum inside,” he said.
But, the fire took it all away.
“It was heartbreaking, gut-wrenching,” Carlon said. “I so adored my dad growing up ... My dad had already passed, but when we lost the home and all his stuff and my family stuff, it felt like losing him again ‘cause all those things that tied me to him were gone,” he said.
He said the first few days after the fire was “ultra, ultra devastating,” but support from other community members going through the same loss and donations from outsiders inspired them to rebuild.
One of Carlon’s friends helped him build a new home, and he and his wife moved into it in 2023. Supply chain issues from the pandemic delayed the project, he said. Carlon credited his insurance company for the rebuild as well.
“Looking back, if I had known how much literal blood, sweat and tears that would be involved in this whole thing, and money, I would have run like heck,” said Carlon, who used to be on a morning radio show on 107.9 FM KMBI in Spokane. “I’m so glad I didn’t know what was in store at the time because it’s been a great experience. Wouldn’t want to do it again, but man, I’ve learned a lot at so many different levels.”
One of the things Carlon learned was there’s special people in the community. He said he’s connected with several community members because of the fire.
“It’s so easy to get isolated these days, especially out here in the country, so to have that sense of community I think is so important,” he said.
But the recovery process is far from over.
Frick said they have been struggling to build a sewer system in town because of the lack of funds and inflation.
“We just recently applied for an EPA forgivable loan to continue, because we have $5.6 million to start it, but it’s not enough. The cost has doubled since we started on the project, and we haven’t even broken ground yet,” said Frick, who’s also the director for Pine Creek Community Restoration, an organization that has been part of the recovery goals.
She added the Amish and Mennonite community plan to make a return in January with the purpose to continue building homes for families affected by the fire. However, with each home built needing an individual septic system that can cost around $21,000, Frick said they are struggling to find the funds.
“Unfortunately, due to this current state of things in the state, in the nation, funding this time right now, and finding those funding sources, has been very difficult,” Frick said.
Tiffany Hogg, whose family is still living in an RV five years after the fire, said she and her family are losing hope despite being told of the Amish and Mennonites returning to help them. Hogg and her husband had two children before and a third after.
“It’s just been very stressful,” said Hogg, who moved to Malden from Everett two years before the fire. “And so it’s been even crazier than before.”
She said she vividly remembers her neighbors banging on their window, urging them to evacuate from their home the day of the fire.
Not knowing how to react, her husband, Kevin Anderson, went outside to get a better look, only to find black smoke filling the air.
From there, she said, it was a blur.
“Everybody was scrambling to get in line to get out of town; it was pretty scary,” Hogg said.
For a month after the fire took their home, she, her husband and two kids lived in a tiny 15-foot trailer at the back of the Harvest Assembly of God Church in Rosalia.
Not long after, they received $76,000 insurance money for the house and paid off their mortgage, got the RVwhere they live now and a couple of cars.
Still, she said they’ve been struggling to get back on their feet.
“We didn’t realize paying off our mortgage was going to completely wipe out our credit, and so we basically had to start all over,” Hogg said. “All these years, we’ve been trying to build our credit and looking at options on what we could do.”
Over the years, Landry said she’s heard the mix of feedback from the community, who, like Hogg, feel as if they have yet to be helped.
“You hear different types of stories, like, ‘So when are you going to build more houses? Oh, we need funding for that.’ Yet you see them building all these new buildings, and you’re like, ‘Well, you want people back, but you’re not helping those people out.’ “
Deckard also said he’s unsure of the necessity of the sewer system, emphasizing that’s something most of the town can’t afford.
“I mean, there ain’t no way 40-something houses are going to be able to afford a sewer system. Most all of us had to redo our sewers. So why do we want to hook up to a sewer system?” Deckard said.
Still, Frick said, a lot of moving factors are involved that most people don’t see.
“There’s finances, lack of insurance, funding, lots of different things that make the struggle real, as far as families being able to move forward in a fashion that you would think by five years, that they would be able to be back in a home, and it’s just not the case,” Frick said.
“Unfortunately, it’s not free. It takes a community coming together and seeking funding,” she said.
She added they are looking at the best financial options for the sewer system so that families can continue to live in Malden.
“A lot of people are living on fixed incomes, and so we understand that this is going to incur another expense,” Frick said, “but at the same time, it’s also going to create more opportunity for people to be able to actually move here.”,
Reporter Thomas Clouse and Garrett Cabeza contributed to this article.
