Barn fire devastates Arlee family

ARLEE — That wasn’t just an old barn that burned to the ground Sunday in the Jocko Valley.

It was a lifestyle, a livelihood, a treasure trove of memories.

“We pretty much lived in there,” Jamie Lynn Sievers said.

So did 11 week-old piglets, three show pigs and 10 chickens that didn’t survive the fast-moving fire. Cinch, a dog, and two sows made it out. One of the latter, Taffy, was mother of the newborn pigs. She was severely burned but was recovering Tuesday in the farrowing barn of Sievers’ best friend and neighbor, Lindsey O’Neill.

Sievers is “pig leader” for the Jocko Ranger 4-H club. She and husband Jack have four kids 11 and under, whose lives centered around the barn.

“It was more than just farm animals around here,” said O’Neill, who with her own children recently got into the show pig-raising business with the Sievers.

“Our kids grew up in that barn,” O’Neill said. “We’d be out checking piglets and the kids would be playing tag on the hay bales and stuff. We kind of raise our kids a little bit the old-fashioned way as far as getting to play outside in the mud and in the hay.”

There was plenty of mud in the barnless barnyard Tuesday. Thanks to neighbor Charlie Hanson, there was enough hay to get the Sievers’ cows and horses through the brunt of winter. Their supply in the barn was a smoldering mass a day later, and the charred straw pile still smoked Tuesday.

Nearby was the black frame of a skid steer that had been parked in the barn. Heaps of mangled tin roofing and other ruins reflected the devastation.

Sievers said the wood barn, sided with red tin, was probably built about the same time their house was, in the mid-1930s.

The Sievers bought the ranch off Gray Wolf Drive, 3½ miles southeast of Arlee, from Jamie’s cousin in 2013. Even before that, she said, it felt like home.

The barn, along with Heart Mountain and the Dancing Boy rock formation and Gray Wolf Peak, form backdrops that she, a professional photographer, used for many a family and engagement photos. Sievers even bought a lovely old dead pickup for $900 off Facebook to use as a prop.

“This," she said, "is my piece of heaven."

Jack Sievers works two weeks on and two weeks off in the oilfields of North Dakota. That's where he was when the fire struck Sunday, after he’d put the almost-finished touches on a new farrowing shed on the right side of the barn during his last return.

Jamie was washing eggs for the kids’ egg-salad lunch when she looked out the window at around 11:35 a.m. Smoke was roiling out the front door of the landmark red barn, one of the most prominent structures in the sprawling flats east of Highway 93.

Dressed only in tank top and pajamas, Sievers threw on muck boots and went running. At the front gate she was greeted Taffy and Belle, the two surviving pigs.

"I don't know how they got out of their pens," she said. “They were coming to get me.”

She noticed hurriedly the low-hanging belly of Taffy, the one with all the babies.

"It was all burned. Her teats were all burned,” Sievers said.

Belle is the 4-H breeder project of her oldest daughter, 11-year-old Brylee. Due Feb. 17, she appeared to be unscathed. O’Neill reported feeling the babies kick inside Belle on Monday.

“I totally cried happy tears,” Sievers said in a Facebook post.

When she flung open the door to the farrowing side of the barn, Sievers was greeted with intense heat and smoke.

“All I wanted to do was get to the pigs and get them out,” she said, pausing a moment to collect herself. “It was just so hot. The entire thing was just flames inside.”

She tried to reach the pigs or the chickens through the main gate.

“It was just so much,” Sievers said.

She ran back to the house, gave quick directions to the 9-1-1 operator, and hurried to the power box to turn off the electricity to the barn, only to find the breaker was already off.

“Then I turned around and saw the whole thing in flames,” she said.

“It pretty much blew up,” Ken Light, chief of the Arlee Volunteer Fire Department, said. “We were on the scene quickly with a full complement of equipment and crew. There was just very little we could do but make sure to contain it. The house and other structures were far enough away that they were not in danger.”

Cause of the fire isn’t known, but Sievers is sure it had to do with the heat lamps for the piglets.

One of the lost sows, Navy, was Sievers’ “baby,” her first show pig. Navy was due in a couple of weeks, after famously delivering a whopping 17 babies in her first brood last year.

The other two, Lucy and Buffy, were new show pigs being prepared for breeding.

“It’s crazy that in a matter of moments everything you worked for, years in the making, can be gone,” Sievers posted on Facebook in the aftermath of the blaze. “I not only lost the place I loved to spend all my time but I lost some of my most loved animals.”

Sievers said when she first turned and saw the flames licking high into the sky, she “just sat down.”

“I couldn’t even look up any more, and all of a sudden everybody’s there grabbing me and hugging me, and a bunch of craziness and …”

O’Neill had been her first call after 9-1-1. She said Gray Wolf Drive and the Sievers’ long lane were already clogged with traffic, making it difficult for her to get there. Not long after she arrived, she watched the barn roof collapse.

“People keep calling to help,” O’Neill said. “They’re like, let us know when you’re going to rebuild. We’re all going to be there. We’re all going to do it. So that’s the ultimate goal, between what insurance can cover and what we can raise, our goal is to rebuild a second barn.”

Sievers plans on replenishing her swine herd too. The commitment to 4-H she shares with O'Neill and their children is unwavering.

“I am going to wait a year for a very special one,” she wrote on Facebook. “If all goes well I will get a sister to two of the ones I lost. And then I will wait until fair time to support some 4-H kids!”

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