Father, son rescue neighbors from burning Bayview house

Ryder Johnson awoke to a startling phone call at 3:43 a.m. on July 19. It was his neighbor, who saw flames shooting out of a next-door house.

Johnson immediately grabbed his 17-year-old son and sprinted toward the home that included residents Liz Justus and her adult son Brent. Liz is the owner of the Lakeland RV Park in Bayview, Idaho, where Johnson and his neighbor have seasonal trailers.

The Johnsons and their neighbors congregated outside the engulfed house, he recalled. While someone dialed emergency services, Ryder, his son and neighbor Steve Jones decided to intervene. “We knew every minute pretty much counted,” Ryder said.

“Bayview has a volunteer fire department, which is great,” Ryder noted. But during these early hours, he feared the response would take too long. From his recollection, 15 or 20 minutes had passed before firefighters arrived.

With a decision to risk their own safety, the team tried to enter through the front entrance to no avail. Jones then moved to breaking the front window, though he sliced his hand “and ended up cutting the tendon in his thumb and dislocating it,” Johnson said.

Ryder and his son proceeded to the back entrance, where they finally gained access through a window. Upon entering the smoldering heat, they found 45-year-old Brent whose face was bloodied. Ryder assumed Brent “woke up during it and got disoriented and fell.”

After rescuing Brent, the father-son team worked to retrieve 72-year-old Liz who “was on a staircase halfway between the couch and her dining room.” The Johnsons and their neighbors laid Liz and Brent on a truck bed as they awaited emergency response personnel.

Ryder said the victims were immediately transported to a hospital in Kootenai County, before being flown to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle.

“They pulled, I believe, her breathing tube out Tuesday evening,” Ryder said when speaking of Liz. “Brent had two or three heart attacks on the way to Kootenai, and there they said he didn’t have any brain activity.”

As of Friday afternoon, Ryder said he believes the mother is awake and alert. A spokesperson for Harborview was unable to be reached at that time.

During a conversation with a fire investigator, Ryder was told that the fire could be attributed to “a cigarette container on the steps leading into the side entry” of the home.

“It supposedly had caught fire earlier,” he learned.

Around 1:20 a.m., Ryder said Liz’s daughter and her boyfriend, who were staying next-door, noticed and addressed the cigarette container’s fire. “They put 2 or 3 gallons of water on it,” Ryder recalled.

“Everything seemed fine, so they all went to bed,” he added.

Their efforts did not completely extinguish the threat; the container most likely continued smoldering until it caught fire, spreading flames to the house just two hours later.

Ryder said the investigator emphasized that “once something like that catches on fire, there’s no way to really put it out” with typical at-home intervention.

At the time of the fire, the Timberlake Fire Protection District released a statement that read, “Firefighters arrived on scene in Bayview to find that neighbors had courageously entered the burning home and rescued the trapped occupants. Their quick and selfless actions no doubt made a difference.”

A Timberlake Fire representative did not respond to a request for comment.

Liz Justus has been an influential member of the Bayview community. She served as Bayview Daze parade organizer for 25 years, before retiring from the post in 2007, according to previous Spokesman-Review reporting.

“She’s kind of a big wig up here,” Ryder said.