The pine needles were two inches thick. That was all 12-year-old Kevin O’Connell focused on while walking to school one windy day 25 years ago.
“Man, I’m going to have to go home and do all this work,” he remembers thinking.
Things didn’t turn out that way.
Instead, O’Connell came home to his house ablaze, the surrounding hills covered in smoke and his father fleeing an exploding shed.
“October 16 was a weird day and kind of changed my life a little bit,” O’Connell said Friday, standing in front of his rebuilt Ponderosa neighborhood childhood home. “You kind of realize that material things aren’t the most important things in the world.”
O’Connell’s home was among 114 that burned Oct. 16, 1991. The fires, which came collectively to be known as “Firestorm,” ravaged the Spokane area. Fueled by 60 mph winds and 41 days without rain, 92 separate blazes burned approximately 35,000 acres. More than 3,000 calls to 911 were received in 24 hours.