PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — For 20 years, 54-year-old Brian Bowlby worked as a volunteer firefighter in Stevenson, Washington, simply because he wanted to help out his small town. He fought structure fires, car fires and even a wild land fire or two.
On Tuesday, Bowlby had a flashback to his volunteer firefighter days, allowing him to step into action at a moment’s notice. While driving toward Troutdale in an Oregon Dept. of Transportation water truck, Bowlby caught a glimpse of a brush fire off westbound I-84, a short distance from Multnomah Falls.
“I saw it there and instinct kind of took over,” Bowlby said. “I turned on my caution lights, pulled the truck over, got the hose charged and started putting water to it.”
With winds blowing east up to 30 mph, Bowlby fought the fire for 45 minutes, containing it to a size of about 20’x50′ until Corbettt Fire crews could arrive and put foam on it.
Bowlby’s action was essential. Without him, it could’ve been a lot worse.
“With the hot and dry windy conditions this was extremely important,” The Corbett Fire Dept. said in a press release.
Though he was quick to fight it, Bowlby said he couldn’t have contained it alone. After 10 minutes another ODOT employee named Ray showed up on scene and hopped into the water truck. Ray turned up the water pressure, giving Bowlby an extra, needed boost.
“Sitting there in idle I wasn’t getting a whole bunch (of pressure),” Bowlby said of the initial firefight.
While fighting the fire, Bowlby said he had another flashback.
Nearly a year ago, the Eagle Creek Fire sparked in the Columbia River Gorge, burning almost 50,000 acres. Multnomah Falls was one of many attractions damaged from the flames. Bowlby, while fighting the fire on Monday, understood the capabilities a brush fire that close to Multnomah Falls could have had with heavy winds.
“I had visions of Eagle Creek going on and that was almost a year ago already,” he said. “I didn’t want to have a re-run of that.
“It was heading toward some fir trees, and as hard as the wind was blowing, if it would’ve got into those, it was heading toward Multnomah Falls and the parking lot there. It was on the north side of the freeway. As bad as the wind we had was going I was hoping nothing was going to blow across to the south side and hit the trees again.”
The convenience of the situation isn’t lost on Bowlby: A longtime volunteer firefighter sees a brush fire breakout while driving in a 3,000-gallon water truck. The way he looks at it, he was just helping people — the same reason he started volunteering 20 years ago.
“Because I had some background in it, it kind of kicked in,” Bowlby said. “I did what I could do and I pretty much just consider it part of my job.”