Pair say fire preventable

BAYVIEW — Phil Stephan and Patti Bolstad believe they might have been able to prevent the Cape Horn Fire if they had just acted mere hours earlier.

“It’s one of those hindsight kind of things,” Bolstad said, as she explained how she and Stephan believe the fire got started. “But what can you do about it now?”

Stephan, who manages all but two of the eight marinas in Bayview, said he and Bolstad were approached by Timberlake Fire personnel on Sunday about 10 a.m. in the morning — roughly two and half hours before the fire erupted.

“They said another boater spotted a couple of people who were stranded on a beach around the cape,” Stephan said. “They asked us if we could go and pick them up because technically the beach was in Bonner County.”

Bolstad said they were told the people were fine, but their boat had been swamped by large waves stirred by Sunday’s wind storm.

“We had a couple of hours before we could head over there,” she said, with Stephan adding that had they just gone and picked up the people at that time, the fire might not have started.

By the time Stephan and Bolstad got to the beach, two women had been rescued by other boats. You can view that rescue here:

What that video doesn’t show was a campfire that appears to have burned out of control. Stephan and Bolstad captured the burning campsite in pictures and video.

Authorities are still reporting the cause of the fire as unknown, but many in the town of Bayview are convinced that the fire was human-caused.

The identities of the stranded people are still unknown, but Stephan and Bolstad said they have turned over photos and the video to several investigating agencies.

“The investigators said the photos are consistent with what they are hearing,” Stephan said.

Efforts to determine which agency has the lead in the Cape Horn Fire investigation were unsuccessful Tuesday.

Both Stephan and Bolstad said it was a shame they couldn’t have acted sooner, but there was no way to know that a fire would occur.

“It is a shame,” Stephan said. “It was really shaping up to be a real good summer season.

“It still could be a good season. When this is all over people will want to come see the burn.”

Stephan said businesses in the town of Bayview rely heavily on summer tourism money, and that has been increasing as Lake Coeur d’Alene gets more and more crowded.

“A lot of them abandon their paid-for boat slips in Coeur d’Alene and come up here,” he said. “Because there are too many jet skis and boats. They can’t water ski down there anymore.”

He said Pend Oreille is also becoming more well known because much of the lake is surrounded by publicly owned forests and beaches that are accessible to boaters.

Stephan said it’s too bad the fire had to happen because depending on how long it takes crews to contain the fire and reopen Highway 54 into Bayview, businesses are losing thousands of dollars a day in revenue and he is spending most of his time watering down docks to prevent flying embers from starting a fire in the marinas.

He said there are millions of dollars worth of boats in the marinas of Bayview and some are worth more than the homes that are burning.

People should know that Bayview is still open for business, and he can comfortably say the boats are all safe.

“The marinas are safe,” he said, adding the U.S. Navy has a base right in the bay, and if anything were to go wrong they would certainly help in the firefighting efforts.

“The town might not be OK,” he said. “But the boats will be fine.”