Helplessness felt during flight from flames

The Charlotte Fire is still burning Friday morning after crews fought through the night to try to contain the blaze.

The fire started just before 3 p.m. Thursday and quickly spread, burning about 1,000 acres and claiming at least 20 homes.

In a live report Friday morning from the evacuation center at Holt Arena, reporter Brittany Borghi describes how she and photojournalist Tyler Gibbons stood on the edge of the fire feeling helpless as they watched a home burn.

As Brittany talked to emergency officials and evacuees on Thursday, that idea of helplessness was just permeating.

Obviously fire crews were working their hardest, but for the people who were, and are displaced, there was nothing they could do.

The fire moved so fast and the flames were so intense that containment seemed impossible.

Jake Semons watched the fire with disbelief as it raged down the hillside toward where he lives on Portneuf Road.

“I just heard a bunch of sirens and looked outside and saw a huge fire going off and drove up there and they had the roads closed already when I saw it,” Semons said.

But his stress wasn’t for himself, but his grandparents, Barbara and Homer.

They live near where the fire started and Semons couldn’t get ahold of them. He didn’t know if they had evacuated and didn’t know where they went.

“(I’m) kind of freaked out,” he said. “I don’t know what to think. It’s just scary, for all the homes and all the other people.”

At times it seemed like the fire was so powerful that the sun could barely be seen through the thick smoke.

Many people were already resigning themselves to “start over.”

For David Coffin, who lives up Autumn Lane, there was no escaping reality.

“I’m thinking that, probably, that quite a few of my friends have lost their homes and possibly myself right now,” Coffin said.

And Coffin, like Semons and so many others, didn’t just live up on that hill by himself.. They lived there with their whole clan. Loved ones. The people you’re supposed to protect when something awful like this happens, but with a fire this strong, all he could do was watch.

“My family, my parents live by me, my sister lives by me. If it’s up there it could get any of us. I don’t wish this on my worst enemy, not at all,” Coffin said.