2025 Story of the Year—Bancroft Fires
The scenes in Bancroft were extraordinary as the fire that started in the center of town quickly spread to several surrounding buildings, like the Koefed house.
One drawback to a weekly paper is that often the largest news for that week can happen early on in that week, which is what happened during what was arguably the biggest story of the year for Caribou County—the structure fires that changed the cityscape of downtown Bancroft on the 20th of June. The fires that devastated the downtown area of Bancroft broke out a little after 2:00 p.m. on Friday, which, because of the Juneteenth holiday, is the very day our paper went out. By the time we were able to publish again, most readers were well aware that the fire started at a residence and fairly rapidly moved down the street to two abandoned structures (those being the building that was once the theatre, and attached apartments). A bit later, the house north of the Call home—belonging to Karen Koefed—began to smoke from the chimney.
When it was all said and done, many agencies, volunteers, neighbors, firefighters, EMS, police, and even a local pilot had done their best to stop the town from going up in flames. While a significant part of town did exactly that, the buildings themselves can be rebuilt. What can’t be replaced is the overwhelming sense of community that drove the firefighting efforts and will be needed more than ever through the rebuilding process.
The most important line in this story is that the injuries sustained are not life-threatening. Mr. Call received burns to his face area, but he and his family managed to escape from the fire before it became an inferno. Mrs. Koefed, across the street, was called and told that she needed to leave her house, which she was able to do safely. The Calls reported that several pets had perished in the fire.
As the afternoon wore on, the number of agencies involved kept expanding to fill the need: the Bancroft volunteer Fire Department (which is now a true icon of what a volunteer FD can be up against and still put up an amazing fight), Caribou County Fire, Caribou County Sheriff’s office, Soda Springs Fire, Soda Springs Police, and dozens of volunteers. Assistance also came from Lava Hot Springs, and the Bear Lake County Fire Department. It took the combined efforts of all of these agencies—plus a cropduster—to fully extinguish the flames.
If that wasn’t enough, a second fire was reported the next evening around ten in a residential chimney. That fire was also put out, but certainly added to the overwhelming sense of just how precarious the seemingly safe and routine world can all of a sudden become.
For us, it was an interesting moment in that while we were not able to print an edition that was in real-time, we were able to provide information on our Facebook page that was quickly distributed. This led to KIFI and EastIdahoNews picking up the story, and changing the way we gathered information. Alana Burns, who lives in Bancroft and has written for the paper, alerted me to the fire as it was first breaking out. Her access and knowledge of the town are much more insightful than mine, which was enormously helpful in getting the story right. As a newspaper, we sometimes strain against social media, but Facebook has been a very effective means of disseminating information and images, and I’m glad we were able to use it for this impactful story.
