VIDEO: It is not unusual this time of the year for thunderstorms to pop up across Southern Idaho, bringing dry lightning and the danger of wildfires. On July 28, 1995, that is precisely what happened. At least a dozen wildfires sparked across Idaho’s high desert and the Boise foothills. One of those fires left a lasting impact in more ways than one and is still felt three decades later: the Point Fire. Doyle McPherson was a volunteer Captain with Kuna Fire. “A lot of it is still as clear as if it happened yesterday,” McPherson said, “and I guess I’ll probably carry that the rest of my life.”
Seven miles south of Kuna, right along the road to Swan Falls, the cheat grass and sagebrush are not the only reminder of what happened here. Two names stand out on a stone monument. Two lives lost in a cascade of catastrophe. The summer of 1995 was like many others. “It was kind of inevitable, things had been so hot, so dry,” McPherson said. On a late July night, two volunteer Kuna Firefighters lost their lives battling the Point Fire: Bill Buttram and Josh Oliver. In a 1995 interview, the fire chief told KTVB that the last words he heard Buttram say were, “We’re surrounded by fire. Our engine quit; we need help.”
McPherson was also responsible for overseeing the new volunteers. Oliver was just 18 years old. “He had displayed good reasoning and good ability and desired to be a career firefighter,” McPherson said. Buttram was 31 and a new father. McPherson said he remembers getting the call because they actually received several calls that day from fires started by lightning. Jake Putnam was a reporter for KTVB at the time and was called in to cover the fires. “The problem was that it was a really wet spring, and so the cheat grass was almost up to the knees,” Putnam said. He had experience covering fires, but he said he had no idea what he would encounter in Kuna that day.
