MILL CREEK — The people of North Creek Presbyterian Church didn’t experience the blazing fury that swept north-central Washington in July. They weren’t in the Okanogan County town of Pateros or nearby when hundreds of homes were incinerated. Their fruit trees and livelihoods weren’t damaged or destroyed by the largest wildfire in state history.
Now, seven months after the Carlton Complex Fire, members of the Mill Creek church are helping people who lived through the inferno. At 6:30 p.m. Sunday, North Creek Presbyterian Church will present a concert by the Mosaic Arts Choir &Orchestra. Money raised through donations at the 100-member choir’s “Hope Rises” concert will help build houses for people who lost everything in the monster blaze.
Church member George Taylor, 70, said some people in a helping group at North Creek Presbyterian have construction experience. In the 1980s, they pitched in to build their church. They also built a church camp on Lake Wenatchee. They plan to build two homes in Pateros. Framework and roof trusses will be built here and trucked to the town of about 600 people. Pateros is at the eastern edge of the Cascades, where the Columbia and Methow rivers meet. A Methodist group is expected to complete the homes’ interiors, Taylor said.
The wildfire, which exploded from four lightning-strike fires in mid-July, eventually burned more than 250,000 acres and about 300 homes and rural buildings, and left part of Pateros in rubble.
“It was moving incredibly fast. We evacuated twice, once to the south and once to the north as the fire closed in,” said Deb Stennes, who lives in the Methow Valley. Her husband, Keith Stennes, and their grown twin sons operate an orchard. Her husband’s grandfather, Britanus Stennes, started the orchard in the 1890s after coming from Norway.
Stennes Orchards Inc. now covers more than 500 acres. The family lost some fruit trees, four miles of deer fencing, and will bear significant costs from fire damage.
“There were walls of fire 100 feet high, moving about a football field each second,” Deb Stennes said Wednesday. Along with sons Kevin and Mark, their daughter Kristin Wall and her family live nearby. All were forced to flee the fire with young children.
When they returned, their homes were smoke damaged but still standing. They believe pumper trucks in the area, likely from Whidbey Island, saved their houses. “We would have lost one of the homes, the original family home, without them,” she said.
Taylor, who lives in the Mays Pond area of Bothell, is Keith Stennes’ cousin. That’s how the Mill Creek church became involved in helping after the fire. “My mother was one of seven children born on the orchard there,” Taylor said. “They built a house in Pateros so the kids could live in town during the school year. I’ve got tons of relatives in the Methow Valley, and spent my youth over there.”
When he learned the magnitude of the fires, Taylor said he and his wife, Josie, and other couples in their Bible study group set out to help. At Christmastime, he said, they “adopted” two men whose homes had burned to the ground.
Earlier this week, Taylor visited Pateros. With the help of caseworkers assisting with rebuilding, two households were identified for the home-building project. Both were burned out of their homes.
Taylor said one, a single man, had worked in a Seattle shipyard before retirement, then built his dream home on the other side of the mountains. The man was uninsured, Taylor said, because he was living “off the grid” with solar panels and a wood stove for power and heat.
The other family chosen for a house is headed by man who came from Mexico in the 1980s to work in the orchards, Taylor said. Now a U.S. citizen, the man and his wife have two children in high school, and he works as a school janitor.
Allan Skoog is director of the Mosaic Arts Choir &Orchestra, which rehearses in Shoreline but has members throughout the Puget Sound area. The choir performs many fund-raisers. A concert last December helped the Edmonds School District’s backpack food program for students in need. In May, the choir will travel to Pateros to perform in a park. Skoog has toured devastated areas in Pateros and Alta Lake, a resort community where 54 homes burned.
“You see a lot of foundations, but the houses are completely gone, or fireplaces standing by themselves. But people have rallied, they’re doing a phenomenal job,” Skoog said.
Deb Stennes sees hope rising from ash.
“I think we’ll look back in five years and see all the blessings that came out of it, the relationships and people helping people,” she said.
Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460; jmuhlstein@heraldnet.com.
Concert to help
fire survivors
The Mosaic Arts Choir &Orchestra will perform a fund-raising concert, “Hope Rises,” at 6:30 p.m. Sunday at North Creek Presbyterian Church, 621 164th St. SE, Mill Creek. Money raised through a free-will offering will help build houses for survivors of last summer’s Carlton Complex Fire. Information: www.northcreekpres.org
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