“We were all paralyzed and couldn’t use our limbs so we floundered along on the ground. Someone helped me into the water of the creek. I remember there was a big snag just above me that was burning and threatening to fall on me. I didn’t care at the time whether it fell or not. I just sat and looked at it.”

“Imagine, if you can, the wind suddenly changing, the rock cut filled with sparks more dense than any skyrocket that could be shot off in your face, with a temperature that in an instant cooked every exposed part of one’s body, with only a moment to realize your condition and then fall down unconscious, and then, as if this were not enough misfortune, awake to find your clothes half burned off, men crazy with pain, some wanting to commit suicide, some wishing to leave through fire and smoke and darkness for Mullan, others throwing their arms around you begging for God’s sake that you better their condition.”

“Evening found our little party many miles from camp. We saw the remains of an elk and several deer; also a grouse hopping about with feet and feathers burned off – a pitiful sight. Men who quenched their thirst from small streams immediately became deathly sick. The clear, pure water running through miles of ashes had become a strong, alkaline solution, polluted by dead fish, killed by the lye. Thereafter, we drank only spring water.”

The most pitiful sight ever witnessed in Mullan occurred Sunday morning when the fifteen survivors of the Boulder Creek (Stevens Peak) fire limped into town. All were staggering and all carried their arms in the air. They were badly burned and the only relief that could be obtained was by holding their arms up. Some of the men were blind from the flames that had burned them, and they held on to the men in front of them. They walked in single file and made a most distressing spectacle. They were so overcome they could not at first give a coherent account of what had happened.