According to accounts of area residents, Heath Ruf is lucky to be alive. But he won’t tell you that. Instead, he’ll take every opportunity he has to thank the people around him.
Ruf, his dad David, and his sons Jordan and Jayden, answered the calls immediately when they heard about the rapidly-spreading fire near the Kansas border on April 22.
From hooking up discs to starting pivots, the three generations of Ruf men did whatever they could as quickly as possible to save livestock, land, and houses in the path of the flame.
“You’d be out in front of [the fire] trying to disc a fire line up. Black smoke would come, and I counted one time, I had 30 seconds before the flames were there,” Ruf said.
Despite the family’s best efforts – and although Ruf hasn’t been able to fully assess the damage to his operation – he said he lost cattle, trailers, equipment, forage, miles of fence and most of his hay and silage. Unfortunately, the damage was still adding up days after the fire started from additional flare-ups.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, there were separate flare-ups on Ruf’s property. Ruf said Tuesday’s flare-up nearly destroyed his entire pile of freshly delivered and ground hay.
Fortunately, Ruf’s house was safe from the fire’s path, but it has been taken over by soot and ash. For now, Heath, his wife Vickie and two sons Jordan and Jayden, along with his parents David and Margaret, said they will take it day by day to recover from the Road 702 wildfire.
