‘We were fighting for our lives’: Pine Valley firefighters reckon with Forsyth Fire’s toll

A black tunnel of smoke choked Pine Valley’s Main Street. Winds gusting up to 70 miles per hour howled, driving flames right up to the edge of the volunteer-run firehouse.

“The smoke and the ash and the heat was so intense we couldn’t keep our eyes open — even with our goggles on,” said Robert Hardy, chief of the Pine Valley Fire Department.

They wore shrouds over their mouths, but every inhale still burned. They were exhausted, working with very little rest since the Forsyth Fire started the night before on June 19.

Booms and roars echoed across the valley as the heat blew valves off propane tanks and gas alit like a jet engine. “Every time one of those went off, I thought, there goes another house,” Hardy said.

He felt defeated. He not only worried he had lost a whole neighborhood of 65 homes but also his firefighters who disappeared behind thick smoke as they drove off to protect other buildings.

“We were fighting for our lives,” Hardy said.

No lives were lost in the Forsyth Fire, which grew to over 15,000 acres in the mountains north of St. George. But the blaze destroyed 13 homes, including those of two Pine Valley firefighters, John Robson and Dale Hagemeyer. Despite the loss, they were ready to help the next day.

“This was traumatic,” Hardy said. “The whole department felt it.”

With the blaze contained, the focus has shifted from fire fighting to recovery. Crews and residents are filling sandbags to prepare for flash floods, clearing out streambeds of burned brush and trees, thinning landscaping around homes, rebuilding — and healing.

“It’s going to be kind of a long-term post-traumatic time,” Hardy said.

Defending their community

The all-volunteer Pine Valley firefighters attacked the blaze for 54 hours before the federal incident command demobilized the crew. During those first few days, there were an estimated 22 engines from surrounding communities helping with structure protection, Hardy said. Federal and state firefighters tackled the fire for over a month, with over 700 personnel working the fire at the end of June.

The roughly two dozen volunteers that make up the Pine Valley Fire Department weren’t just fighting any fire, though.

They were defending their homes.

“I never had the opportunity to defend my community, let alone my neighborhood,” said Rick Albee, the department’s safety officer.

Albee was a professional firefighter in California for over 30 years prior to moving to Pine Valley. During those years, he felt empathy and sympathy on calls, but he didn’t know the owner of the home or business that burned. He was also trained to disconnect. “We go on so we’re ready for the next call,” he said.

This time, there was no disconnecting.

For others, tackling such a blaze was an entirely new experience. Pine Valley firefighters are mostly retirees who spent their lives working as pharmacists, plumbers and other professions that didn’t involve rushing toward towering flames.

They’ve put their expertise to good use for the department — Frank Davie, for example, previously worked on electronics and radio towers and now manages the firehouse’s communication systems.

Toni and Marc Rose joined the department after Marc retired from a 33-year career as a firefighter in California. Toni is now an advanced emergency medical technician, but this was her first time on scene for such an inferno.

As she and fellow EMT Claudia Davis managed nonstop donations of food and water at the firehouse, she worried about Marc fighting the blaze in the valley. One moment she looked out the window and saw 100-foot flames roaring toward Marc. He and the crew were protecting a house with two residents who still hadn’t left.

“We have to move,” she heard Marc say on the radio. “We can’t keep our crew here.”

They made it out the one road in the neighborhood as flames rushed from the bottom of the valley over the mountain ridge in just 15 minutes.

“It was very scary,” Toni said.

Processing trauma

A week after the fire took off, the department and a few family members gathered in a circle outside the town’s historic church for a check-in with a counselor from VEST, a program that provides mental health services for first responders.

“A lot of people were feeling really stressed out,” said Teri Forbes, the mental health liaison for the department. “It really helped us bond as a group.”

In 2024, the Utah State Legislature required all first responder agencies to provide or make available mental health resources. The Pine Valley Fire Department received a grant from the state to set up their mental health program, including counseling for current and former crew and family members.

The timing couldn’t have been better for the Pine Valley firefighters: As soon as the fire hit, they were already prepared with mental health support.

“It was amazing that we didn’t have to scramble to get those resources available,” Hardy said.

Conversations about mental health among firefighters have improved immensely, Albee told The Tribune. During his early years as a firefighter, the crew would have “critical stress debriefings” after an incident, and Albee estimates 1% of his team would show up.

Marc Rose, Pine Valley’s deputy fire chief and training officer, remembers being told to “get over it,” during his first rough calls in California in the late ’80s.

“Getting some education, I realized that I have PTSD too,” he said.

Firefighters develop similar rates of PTSD as war veterans and have higher rates of suicide than the general public, according to the U.S. Fire Administration.

“It’s not a very good prognosis for firefighters,” said Albee, who also experiences post-traumatic stress. “After they retire with PTSD, the suicide rate is really, really high.”

The Pine Valley firefighters are still “dealing with things internally,” said Davis, who provides peer support alongside Albee, Forbes and one other firefighter.

“[We] just give someone a person to talk to or let them know that their thoughts and feelings are normal,” Davis said. Since the fire, they’ve been keeping an eye on their team, sharing resources and reassuring people they’re not alone.

There’s hope that by providing the crew with mental health resources and proven treatments they’ll reach a place of post-traumatic growth, Hardy said. “We know everybody’s going to go through traumatic events, and we need to focus on growing from that.”

Beyond counseling, they also have their community. “When there’s an opportunity to help, everybody will just pitch in, no matter what it is,” said Pine Valley Fire Captain Rob Nodine.

‘We’re still here’

As the Pine Valley firefighters recover, they’re still cleaning up the rubble and bracing for more destruction to come. While the state prays for rain, Pine Valley residents hope moisture comes in moderation as a big storm may catalyze flash floods and mudslides.

The fire department is hosting community sandbag filling parties and helping residents clear streambeds that run along properties. They’re also talking with residents about how to make their homes more resilient in future fires.

“We’re still here, and we’re still in a vulnerable state,” Hardy said. “I want people to understand that this is going to be a long-term thing for us.”

For some, that means starting over. Robson doesn’t know if he’ll rebuild. He was already splitting time between Pine Valley and St. George — a 40-minute drive south — where his wife, who has stage 6 Alzheimer’s, lives and receives care.

“I’m a one man show,” he said. “If something happens to me, game over.”

Even though Robson previously thinned and trimmed trees around his property, the fire incinerated the mountain home to the ground with nothing left to recover except a metal lawn art flower.

“I’m going to try to have it rebuilt as the lone survivor of the fire,” he said.

Robson’s property has been cleared of burnt trees and the melted and charred remnants of the family’s cabin. Amid the grief, Robson has been dealing with insurance claims, trying to catalog all that was lost. “That is a nightmare,” he said.

Regardless of whether or not he rebuilds, though, he still plans to volunteer with the fire department.

“We’re a family,” he said. “It keeps me going.”

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