CHENEY, Wash. — It's difficult to even fathom all the loss.
Tom Turley, still clad in slippers, surveyed the damage to one of the shops at his Cheney business. He's been up since midnight when the fire at Turley Logging and Timberland Management was called in.
"Looking in there, how hot all those parts got," he sighed.
Overnight, the shop caught fire; Turley was able to move some of his logging trucks and other large equipment out of the way. Other gear is still on the fire line, he said, marking a saving grace.
His business has been salvaging timber and cleaning up debris from recent wildfires, like the Columbia Fire in Tyler and last summer's Gray Fire in Medical Lake.
"Kind of devastating," he said. "The Gray Road fire was [a] sadness overload dealing with all those people and this gives me a little taste of it."
Turley says he's sure the fire started with a fifth wheel he had parked inside the shop, plugged in as he prepared to head to Kendrick this week to salvage pine damaged in the Texas Fire.
"Yeah, 38 footer," he said of the RV. "It was nice, I was pretty proud of that. Only got to use it a couple times."
Inside the shop was equipment, parts, and tools he inherited from his father. Maybe more than a quarter million dollars, he estimates.
Though the total loss is hard to figure.
"Yeah, no insurance on that either," he said of the RV. "I was gonna do it this week."
He's thankful the suspected electrical issue didn't happen while he was temporarily living in it near Kendrick's fire line.
Turley and most of his crew don't just respond to clean up after fires; he says most of them are also wildland firefighting certified and they'd recently cut fire lines less than a mile from his business and home for the fire in Tyler. He says that may have also saved the fire from spreading.
Now he's faced with another salvage. This time, personal.
"Yup," Turley shook his head. "She got hot. Real hot. Gonna be quite the clean up process and sift through. Pick out what I can, junk the rest."