GETCHELL — His wife and two kids would be watching. The families of the missing would be, too.
Travis Hots thought of them each time he stepped in front of reporters and cameras in the days after a mountain of mud crashed down on a neighborhood. The Oso mudslide took 43 lives.
Hots, a rural fire chief who grew up in Marysville, was for a time the face and voice of the tragedy.
He briefed reporters twice a day for nearly a week. He tried to put the unimaginable into words and reassure families that searchers were doing everything they could. Worry filled his voice, even as he held out hope for survivors. The world saw the exhaustion settle under his eyes and on his shoulders as the days stretched on with no signs of life in the mud.
He fielded relentless questions. How many were missing? Could anyone survive? What did it look like out there? A somber Hots delivered the numbers — 8, 12, 24. Children, wives, husbands, grandparents, entire families gone.
No one wanted the young chief’s job in those days.
“It’s pressure cooker stuff,” he said.
Hots, 39, would have felt more at home with searchers. He’s been a firefighter since his teens. He is a pilot with the county Helicopter Rescue Team.
He stepped up because the families of the missing were watching, waiting for word. He stepped up because Oso Fire Chief Willy Harper was taking care of his own. Hots wanted to lend a hand because that’s who he is and who he has strived to be since he was a kid, determined to be a helper, a firefighter like his dad.
Hots couldn’t bring himself to talk about the slide for months after he walked away from the cameras and questions. Today, he is ready. He keeps up with an Oso family who is building a new home. He finds hope in their precious steps forward. He is proud of the men and women who didn’t give up until the last victim was recovered.
“No one has to drive out there and wonder if their family will be found. No one ever quit.” Hots said. “As far as I’m concerned that land is sacred.”
The chief also hopes others can learn from what happened. Maybe talking and sharing will make them better helpers.
From a quick call to a disaster
Hots was at the fire station in Getchell on March 22, 2014. He’s been chief there since 1999. He’s also chief for District 21 in rural Arlington. Hots has been a firefighter in Marysville, Lake Goodwin and Lake Stevens. That Saturday he was taking a refresher course on wildfires. Hots took a picture of firefighters in the engine bay. In the photograph, the wall clock reads 11:05 a.m.
His pager went off. District 21’s swift water rescue team was being called out to a report of a roof on Highway 530 and possible flooding along the Stillaguamish River. He told the instructor he’d be gone 20 minutes.
“I didn’t get back to the station for a week,” he said.
The emergency radio was quiet while he drove toward Arlington. He figured out the incident was being broadcast on a different channel — one reserved for major disasters.
He assigned himself to the call and sped up. He approached Skaglund Hill, west of the slide. People had pulled off the highway and were standing outside their cars and trucks. He couldn’t see the slide from where he was. The hills blocked the view.
He heard Harper on the radio, asking emergency crews to turn off the sirens. Rescuers were listening for survivors’ screams.
Harper was in the mud. Hots radioed his friend, asking him how he could help. Harper was going to keep searching.
Hots set up a command post at his white Ford Crown Victoria. He wrote on the hood of his car with a grease pen. He was keeping track of where people were, what resources were deployed and what should be done. He needed to bring order to chaos.
People were trapped. Neighbors were untangling survivors from trees and from houses reduced to kindling.
Helicopters were the best way to lift out the injured. The mud sucked at the searchers’ legs and hips. The county’s helicopter crew was training that morning. The bird was above the slide in under an hour.
Still unaware of the size of the disaster, Hots decided they should get a look from above. What were they up against? Were people on either side of the slide at risk? There were reports the river had dropped downstream while rising two feet in 40 minutes upstream.
Don’t get tunnel vision, Hots told himself. He flashed to the New York firefighters and police officers who raced into the World Trade Center and never came out.
“I don’t want to end up getting people hurt,” he said. “I’ve never been more on edge.”
The magnitude of the destruction hit when Hots saw Oso volunteer firefighter Seth Jefferds. Jefferds told the chief he was going to look for his house. His family was inside.
Jeffreds came back, held up between two men. His wife and baby granddaughter had been home. Nothing was left.
Hots couldn’t give into the emotions. People were relying on him.
Snohomish County sheriff’s chief pilot Bill Quistorf had flown a geologist over the slide in the county’s smaller helicopter. His recommendation was to move people out of the area. There was too much uncertainty.
People downstream needed to get out of their houses and to higher ground. That meant sending firefighters and police door-to-door. They used emergency broadcasts and automated calls.
Hots worried about the crews. He was responsible for their safety.
“If (the river) breaks loose and takes them out, that’s going to be a difficult thing to live with,” Hots said.
By dark, the chief was at the operations center in Arlington. Someone mentioned the reporters waiting for information. Hots doesn’t recall who asked him to talk to media.
“I can do this one time,” he remembers thinking. “I had the job for a week.”
International media pressure
The next day started at 4 a.m. back at the operations center. Again he was asked to brief the media. The scope of the disaster was coming into focus.
For years local reporters had called him about house fires and car crashes. Now he was facing lines of television cameras and reporters from around the world.
Every day before he briefed the media he tried to get out in the field. He talked to the searchers and heavy equipment operators. He walked around Darrington and Arlington, jotting down the questions strangers were asking him. What were they using to dig? How long would they be out there? He figured people at home might be wondering the same things. Those trips were crucial, Hots said.
He also reminded himself that he was talking to his community and those who loved the people who lived along Steelhead Drive.
“I knew family and friends were watching every single newscast,” Hots said.
He pictured his own kids hearing their dad on TV.
His children, 6 and 10, were asleep when he returned home every night from Arlington. He didn’t see them until Day 5. They missed their dad. His daughter wanted to do something for the victims. She said she was going to sell her electronic reader and give the money to charity.
The memory of his daughter’s kindness is a bright spot in the dark.
On Friday, Day 7, some out-of-town reporters hammered him. Why didn’t he have new counts of the dead? Hots couldn’t answer more questions that day. He left for home. He ended up heading east, toward Oso.
“The families are not going home. I’m not digging in the mud. Why do I deserve to go home?”
Hots spent the day with searchers. It was where he needed to be.
Media briefings were turned over to public information officers from outside Snohomish County.
Hots returned to the Getchell Fire Station on Day 10. Work was waiting. So was generosity and compassion from neighbors, fellow firefighters and people he’d never met.
That day he was first on scene to a house where a woman had died. The woman’s son fretted over Hots. Why wasn’t he home resting?
A woman at a playground where he took his children handed him a note. She and her husband had been praying for him.
A crew from the Neah Bay Fire Department had heard Hots often fished the waters off the coast there. They wanted to ease the hurt they saw on the chief’s face. They delivered an ice chest full of fish. They offered traditional Native American drum songs.
For four months, while crews searched for the last victims, Hots didn’t talk about the slide. He politely turned down invitations to speak in public. He wasn’t ready.
His often thinks of how much people lost.
Strangers still approach him in the grocery store. “Hey, you’re the Oso slide guy.”
He sees it differently. He just told the world what he could. Those few days on TV aren’t going to be his legacy.
He’s a people helper. That’s what matters.
Diana Hefley: 425-339-3463, hefley@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @dianahefley
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