Eleven days after a fire tore through a Big Horn County couple's shop, destroying a business they built over 43 years along with vehicles and equipment collected over a lifetime, Rick and Steva Dooley are still digging through the wreckage — and finding some unlikely survivors.
“There was a lot more that will be salvageable than it looks like,” Steva told Cowboy State Daily.
Antique tractors that sat beneath the burning roof might be salvageable. Decades of Rick’s mechanic manuals survived, though some were soaked. Meat inside one freezer was still frozen. Even the powder and primers in Rick’s reloading room never ignited.
Although the Dooleys had no insurance on the shop, Steva said the loss looks different to her after watching dozens of firefighters she has known since they were children battle the flames without anyone getting hurt.
“We serve a good God, and what happened was not good,” she said. “But He has a plan, and we still know that we serve a good God.”
Then she put 43 years of work and everything still in the wreckage into perspective.
“In light of eternity,” she said, “this is pretty little.”
‘Your Shop’s On Fire!’
The fire started on an otherwise ordinary Saturday afternoon, Oct. 3.
Steva spent the morning at the farmers market, then returned to the couple’s home outside Basin and had lunch with Rick.
Rick is 80 and has severe arthritis, Steva said, and hadn't been working much in the shop lately. After lunch, the two lay down to rest.
Then someone began pounding on their door.
A neighbor burst inside.
“Is Rick here? Are you guys here?” Steva recalled the neighbor yelling. “Your shop’s on fire!”
Their house is about a half-mile from the shop.
Steva and Rick hurried outside and looked toward it. The southwest corner was already engulfed.
“It was big, huge flames and a big black column of smoke,” she said.
The neighbor had already called 911 and went into the burning shop to make sure nobody was inside, Steva said.
Basin, Burlington and Greybull firefighters converged on the Lane 40 property. Steva estimated that 30 to 40 responders eventually were working on the blaze.
The rural property didn't have a water supply capable of feeding the engines, Steva said, so tankers hauled water from near the hospital about 5 miles away and dumped it into a portable tank, where pumpers could draw it back out for firefighters.
Big Horn County Fire District 2 Capt. Keith Kelly told Steva after the fire that diesel and oil inside the shop complicated firefighters’ efforts.
Crews worked for hours Saturday and were back at the property Sunday.
A Shop Built Little By Little
For the Dooleys, the burning building wasn't simply a shop. It had grown alongside much of their adult lives.
Steva said the oldest portion went up around 1984, and a large metal shop was added in 2000.
“We just kind of built as we had money and time,” she said. “Therefore, it started out really little and it grew over the years.”
The largest section measured about 40 by 60 feet, with three bays and 14-foot doors. Another section was roughly 60 by 30 feet, Steva estimated.
For 43 years, she and Rick operated their diesel injection business, Valley Diesel, largely from the property.
Their customers came from across the Big Horn Basin, Steva said, including Cody and Meeteetse.
The shop also accommodated another passion.
Rick and Steva collect vintage and antique tractors, many of which Rick worked on himself. The couple has traveled to a vintage tractor and engine show near Billings nearly annually for about 30 years.
Several tractors waiting for Rick's attention were parked inside the big shop when it caught fire. Despite the destruction around them, Steva said many appear salvageable.
Goodbye Old Red
One loss hurts more than the others.
Rick bought a red Ford pickup 52 years ago, before he and Steva were married.
It was there when they dated. It was there when they married. And it kept going.
“We probably put 400,000 miles on it,” Steva said.
Eventually, the clutch went out. Rick parked it beside the shop, intending to get around to fixing it when he had time, but the fire got there first.
“It was totally destroyed,” Steva said. “That’s probably the only thing that I can say was particularly sentimentally stressful.”
The Ford wasn't the only vehicle lost. “We did lose several vehicles,” Steva said.
She quickly qualified that statement: “Basically, to us, it’s all stuff, you know.”
A local salvage yard operator has been helping remove the burned vehicles, while friends have brought equipment to haul debris.
Now the community where they spent decades building their lives and business is trying to help them recover. A silent auction fundraiser is scheduled for 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday at Riverside High School in Basin.
The public event is being organized by Beverly Inskeep Henke and the Basin/Greybull Sell Trade or Give Away group.
“The community has been amazing,” Steva said. “Absolutely. I mean, the community has been amazing.”
Shop Destroyed
Worland Fire Department investigators traced the blaze to an electrical control box on a piece of equipment inside the shop.
Photographs from Oct. 3 show flames ripping through the building behind a yard crowded with tractors and machinery as thick black and gray smoke rolls overhead.
“There’s nothing left of the building,” Steva said. “The building is completely gone.”
The fire had gotten into the space between the metal ceiling and roof, Steva said, and an excavator was eventually brought in to tear down the ceiling.
Yet that ceiling might have helped save some of the antique machinery beneath it.
“The ceiling is part of what protected the old tractors that were back there,” Steva said.
Rick had accumulated “tons of books” — technical manuals and reference materials collected over his decades as a mechanic.
Some got wet, but most survived.
“Not in their original form,” Steva said, “but they will survive.”
‘The Kids’
The Dooleys have no biological children, but that doesn't mean they don't have kids.
Steva has written about them in her columns for the Basin Republican Rustler, calling them her and Rick's “local tribe” — people who have increasingly stepped in as the couple has gotten older, irrigating when Rick was sick, cleaning chicken coops, hauling firewood and, this summer, putting a new metal roof on their home.
After the fire, they came again.
Kevin Thomas and his wife, Marla Taylor Thomas, along with Marla's brother Ray Williams, have been at the property nearly every day, Steva said.
Their other "daughter," Angie Cherni, is an EMT with Cody Regional Health and a Basin firefighter. She was at the fire with the ambulance.
“This poor girl caught it from all directions,” Steva said.
“She was — and has been — amazing,” she added. “In fact, they’ve all been amazing.”
Friends have offered skid steers and dump trailers. A neighbor offered freezer space, which became unexpectedly useful when the family discovered the frozen meat.
Toolman Rentals and Sales in Burlington provided the excavator, Steva said.
People from communities where Valley Diesel had customers have called, too.
“Anything we can do, don’t hesitate to call,” Steva said they have told her.
Kolby Fedore can be reached at kolby@cowboystatedaily.com.
