A handwritten note left by a firefighter who helped save a home from the East Troublesome fire has lead to an outpouring of joy and gratitude on social media.
Daniel Stones on Sunday evening posted the note left behind by a fire crew who save his home, just off U.S. 34 about halfway between Granby and Grand Lake, from the devouring flames of the second-largest wildfire in Colorado history.
It read: “If this note finds you we must have done something right. Sorry for the loss of your shed and we had to cut a little of your wood fence, to save your house. Things got really hot we stayed as long as possible.” Best wishes, Engine 1446, Meeker, Co.
#EastTroublesomeFire A HUGE toast to @MeekerFire #1446 tonight. We got your note. Inside the burn line and saved. Forever in your debt and with tears of gratitude. You are truly SUPERHEROES. Words do no justice. THANK YOU. pic.twitter.com/5uDHhtbc4i
— Daniel Stones (@monobisco) October 26, 2020
On Sunday, Stones responded to the note on Twitter: “We got your note. Inside the burn line and saved. Forever in your debt and with tears of gratitude. You are truly SUPERHEROES. Words do no justice. THANK YOU.”
On Monday afternoon, Stones’ tweet had more than 3,000 likes, 561 retweets and 201 quote tweets. The tweet had a long line of replies with expressions of congratulations and joy, along with heartfelt gratitude for firefighters. Some replies talked of shared fears, losing a home, and some mentioned homes lost.
“That is so cool. Greetings from a neighbor on CR-4571 up the road. (My house also probably survived.),” said Jules Zane on Twitter.
“Incredible … these firefighters like @MeekerFire are some of the most honorable, brave and thoughtful humans I’ve ever seen. Thank you for sharing this,” said CG @cganilo.
Stones replied to many of the comments in the long thread.
Kyle Frary, a wildland firefighter with U.S. Bureau of Land Management based out of Meeker, left the note.
Frary, who was getting some much-deserved rest on Monday at home, in part because of the Sunday snowstorm that knocked the raging fire down, downplayed the note and his role in saving Stones’ home.
“We don’t do this job for any recognition or anything like that,” Frary said. “We are just doing our job that we get paid to do.”
Frary, 36 and a wildland firefighter for 18 years, said he was with two other crew members on Thursday, an incredibly raging day for the fire when it grew about 170,000 acres, along U.S. 34 where they were working on structure protection.
“It was so dark in there from the smoke laying over it, it was hard to see anything,” Frary recalled. “Basically, we were going from one house to the next trying to save each place.”
The crew had a hose around the home, a two-story house with a deck, trying to keep the flames away.
“As the fire got super hot, we had to pull out,” Frary said. The crew went “downhill” to a safe spot and watched the fire sweep through the area.
“When we felt it was safe for our crew to go back in, that is what we did,” Frary said.
They went back to the house and put out a shed that had caught fire. The crew also pulled a section of the deck apart, because it had caught fire, and detaching the decking kept the flames from spreading to the house.
“There was a wood fence and landscaping material on fire right next to the house,” Frary said. “We had get rid of that, knock it out and cut it away.”
On Monday, Frary said he was “resting up and doing really good.”
And he’s now ready to go whereever the demanding, dangerous job calls him next.
“We’ll wait and see,” Frary said. “We can go anywhere in the country. We go where we are needed next.”
