Alaska Firefighter Who Lost Home to Blaze Gets his Dogs Back

June 19--WILLOW -- Cecily Boeve urged the spooked sled dog past the wreckage of Leo Lashock's home Thursday morning.

Lashock is a captain with the Willow Fire Department and a recreational dog musher. The house he lives in burned down Sunday while he was fighting the Sockeye wildfire as it rapidly spread in the Susitna Valley.

The Boeves, his next-door neighbors, evacuated from the fire but took care of Lashock's team until Thursday.

Then they brought 17 dogs home.

"I know, I know," the 20-year-old Boeve crooned as she guided the slender husky past the crumpled metal roof, the blackened mattress spring, the stink of char and ruin. "This is scary. This isn't home, is it?"

The house was gone. But the dog yard survived. The huskies wagged their tails and sniffed unburned wooden dog boxes.

"We're going to get them chained out back where they used to be," Cecily's father, Gordon Boeve, said from Houston Middle School on Thursday morning before the move began. "Leo is busy with the fire. He has been working pretty much nonstop since the fire started."

Urgent call

Lashock, 51, rushed to the front as the wildfire exploded Sunday afternoon into an inferno of 100-foot walls of flame rushing south toward homes and cabins.

Boeve and her family knew the fire was bad when they saw the menacing smoke cloud boil up. The phone rang.

"Leo called and said, 'It's Leo. Get my dogs,' and hung up," Boeve said Thursday at the school. "So then we went into major panic mode."

They also got the dogs out.

"They kept me apprised of what was going on. As soon as I knew they had got them out of there I was pretty relieved," Lashock said Thursday by phone from the fire, where crews continued to hose down hot spots and build protective fire lines. "Had it been the other way around where the house was saved and the dogs weren't, I'd be ripped apart right now."

Three of his dogs are missing and feared dead but he's holding out hope that at least two may turn up.

Grim sight

The fire started Sunday at a property off West Sockeye Avenue, at Mile 77 of the Parks Highway north of Willow near Kashwitna Lake.

Neighbors reported hearing fireworks or loud booms before seeing flames. An investigation continues into the cause of the fire, but fire commanders say the role of fireworks is under scrutiny.

Lashock wasn't home. He was about 8 miles up the Parks Highway helping Willow Fire Chief Mahlon Greene with a project at the chief's cabin.

The emergency radio crackled with the increasingly dire reports as the blaze quickly swelled. Lashock headed for the fire, eyeing the huge column of smoke already rising about 3 miles from his home.

He turned toward a road closest to the flames. Heavy smoke cut all visibility. There were houses directly in the path of the advancing fire. Cars emerged from the smoke as residents escaped.

South, along Kashwitna Lake, Lashock started blowing his horn and moving people out. Another huge smoke plume rose. People weren't moving fast enough: A resident on a four-wheeler pushed it close enough that Lashock feared the fire would overtake the firefighters.

"It was at the point where the next decision was to bail out," he said. "We would have lost some personnel at that point."

At some point, Lashock looked toward his neighborhood and saw a wall of orange smoke.

"That's presumably when my house was gone," he said.

But he knew his dogs were safe thanks to his neighbors.

Inside the fire zone

The Boeves joined the increasing number of Willow residents over the past couple days who returned home as the fire appeared to calm, shrinking slightly to about 7,000 acres.

They returned to their house on Phido Street on Wednesday despite official warnings to stay out of the evacuation area for the 12-square-mile fire zone. Fire commanders say they hope to start reducing the evacuation area and highway restrictions as soon as Friday.

The Boeves on Thursday moved the dogs from a shady spot near the hockey rink at the Houston Middle School emergency shelter.

Lashock wanted them home, said Tamara Boeve, Gordon's wife and Cecily's mother. Another daughter, Talon, also helped with the move.

"It's a dicey situation," Tam Boeve said at the house Thursday. "Leo said it's OK. We're so sick of being in two, three different places at a time."

The Boeve home stood unscathed, surrounded by immolated spruce. A series of raised garden beds held green vegetables. The family's cat, left behind Sunday, turned up alive but burned.

Hot spots continued to flare in the area overnight and into Thursday.

A small log cabin survived the fire at Lashock's place. Right after the family moved the dogs with help from two mushers, the Boeves had to call 911 for two hot spots smoldering nearby.

Fresh start

Lashock on Thursday wasn't far away. He was working in his neighborhood with local fire departments, including Willow's and wildland Hotshot crews, to protect homes and cabins near Little Willow Creek.

Lashock said he lost everything but what he had in a camper truck: 40 years of accumulated possessions; his dog truck, clothing and furniture; even two grandstand seats from the old Fenway Park that the Red Sox fan had shipped to Alaska.

He's still putting in 16-hour days and resting at the Willow fire station.

Lashock plans to move into the cabin that survived the flames. He doesn't own the property, and the landowner spends most of his time in the Lower 48.

"There's no rebuilding. The cabin is sufficient," he said. "It's a good time to downsize anyway."

Lashock will have to find room for at least one memento the Boeves managed to save: a personalized, autographed photo of Randolph Mantooth and Kevin Tighe, stars of the 1970s medical action show "Emergency!"

The inscription reads, "In gratitude for your service."

Copyright 2015 - Alaska Dispatch News, Anchorage