Charlie Deach dug a fire line to protect the 136-year-old Columbia Grange Hall

LYLE — In the middle of the night on July 18, Lyle was under evacuation orders as Charlie Deach dug a fire line to protect the town’s 136-year-old Columbia Grange Hall from flames that crawled across Klickitat County.

Deach’s family has lived in the county for generations. His great-grandfather likely went to the same Grange where Deach, 76, now serves as president.

That night, Deach had one thought: “I can’t live with myself if I don’t do something to save that Grange.”

The Burdoin wildfire — which destroyed 44 buildings and scorched 11,000 acres before it was contained earlier this month — began earlier that day. In the middle of the flames sat the Columbia Grange, a gathering space for farmers and rural residents since 1889, the year Washington gained statehood. It’s the oldest Grange in the state.

The walls of the wooden building are lined with images of early members, certificates and other memorabilia. A small closet holds stacks of meeting records.

Deach remembers the morning of July 18 being sunny. At 1 p.m., Deach took a nap and woke up to find the sun was no longer shining through his window.

“I opened my back door and there it was about 1,000 feet high — yellow boiling smoke, then the scramble was on,” Deach said.

Deach has an organic farm 5 miles from the Grange. That afternoon, Deach sprang to action using a backhoe to dig a perimeter around his land, a tactic he learned as a soldier in the Vietnam War. After finishing, he weaved through the blaze, smoke and fire truck-lined streets to bring his equipment to the Grange.

Deach knew firefighters would be focusing on saving homes and people, rather than the empty Grange hall, so he set to work.

“It’s an old wood building, it doesn’t take anything to run some sparks underneath when the wind is blowing 40 (mph),” Deach said.

For an hour-and-half, Deach mowed down the grass and brush near the fence line of the property. He dug into the earth to create 50-foot-wide berms to combat the fire’s wrath.

“As we were finishing, the county police were sitting here saying, ‘You got to go now,’ because the flames were coming over the top of the hill,” Deach said.

He watched as the fire crested the hill along the Klickitat River and then it stopped and turned toward the Grange.

“We could see all the black smoke rising up where the Grange was,” Deach said.

A friend of Deach’s who had refused to leave his home drove by the Grange at 5:30 the next morning to see if it was still standing.

“He called us and said your Grange is still standing, and we sat up in our camper and burst into tears,” Deach said.

Christine Hamp, president of the National Grange, formally recognized Deach with a proclamation for “his heroism, his commitment to the preservation of Grange heritage, and his enduring example of leadership, courage and service.”

Hamp traveled from her home in Spokane to Lyle for an Aug. 13 ceremony honoring Deach.

Hamp said she hopes two things will come out of Deach’s heroic act — that more people join the Grange and that the organization will digitize its records.

Since the fire, the Columbia Grange has gained about 10 members, Deach said.

“I’ve had people show up on my back porch to become Grange members,” he said.

Deach hopes that the Grange will continue to bring the community together after the fire.