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‘We were going to suffocate or burn’: Family recounts being trapped by the Tartar Fire

By CNN

ID: RESIDENTS, LIVESTOCK EVACUATED FROM WILDFIRE

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    WEISER, Idaho (KIVI) — The Tartar Fire has burned more than 103,000 acres and is threatening homes and communities around Weiser, with one family describing how they became trapped while trying to escape the flames and feared they wouldn’t make it out alive.

The fire started July 24 but made a massive run late Saturday into Sunday, growing by roughly 80,000 acres overnight. As of Monday, the fire is 11% contained.

Kelly Glenn rushed to help his sister, Carlina Jensen, and her brother-in-law, Josh Beasley, evacuate livestock after learning the fire was moving toward their property. As the fire got closer, the family loaded trailers with animals and opened gates so the rest could escape.

“Loaded what we could, opened up all the fences for everything else, let them run out, um, and then hope that they’d make it through the night,” Jensen said.

Jensen left first with the animals and waited at the bottom of the hill for her brother and her husband. But as they tried to drive out, the fire exploded around them.

“The smoke was just thick. Couldn’t even see the front of the car and then the ash was on the windshield, so it also doubled the, the vision problem,” Glenn said.

Unable to see the road and surrounded by flames, Glenn says they turned around and drove back to the property, where Beasley had already decided to stay and defend the home and surrounding properties.

“I had kind of planned on staying and saving the houses, but I wanted everybody else to go. It got scary when it started getting in here and fences were catching fire and then it started creeping up this little hill,” Beasley said.

With no safe way out, the family says they spent hours battling the flames with hoses, sprinklers and shovels after law enforcement told them crews couldn’t reach them and to fight the fire with whatever they had.

“We was gonna suffocate or, or burn. Um, it was hard to breathe. It was really, really hard to breathe,” Glenn said.

The family successfully saved their home. All of the evacuated and released animals were later accounted for and found safe.

“I don’t have any regrets. If we wouldn’t have stayed, everything I had would have been gone,” Beasley said.

As of Monday afternoon, evacuation orders remain in effect in parts of the area.

For the latest information on the Tartar Fire, follow the Washington County Emergency Management and USWFS Great Basin social media pages for updates on evacuations, fire activity and resources.

This story was initially reported by a journalist and has been, in part, converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. KIVI verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

What college football and horse racing have in common: Greed wrecking a good thing

By CNN
(CNN) — On their face, they would seem as far apart on the sporting spectrum as tiddlywinks and shot put.On the one end sits college football, the billion-dollar industry that commands attention from August until January. On the other is horse racing, the niche sport that owns a five-week blip of the calendar.And yet, besieged by the same afflictions of greed, self-interest and a comical inability to work together, horse racing is doing its damndest to similarly mess up its very good thing.Wes Moore, the governor of Maryland, announced Wednesday that the Preakness would be moving from its traditional-third-Saturday-in-May date to the fourth Sunday of the month.Taken alone, it seems like a good idea. For years, horsemen and horsewomen have argued that the traditional running of the Triple Crown’s second leg, a mere two weeks after the Kentucky Derby, no longer suited today’s equine athletes. Three of the last five Derby winners have bypassed the Baltimore-based race, putting the Triple Crown quest to rest before it even got started.Except, much like college sports, no single decision happens in a vacuum. The Preakness switch comes two days after Churchill Downs, Incorporated and the New York Racing Association announced a partnership to form a six-race thoroughbred racing series, which includes the Triple Crown’s third leg, the Belmont Stakes.The Belmont, per the announcement, is holding firm on its traditional run date on the first Saturday in June. Which means that rather than running within two weeks after the Derby to have a shot at the Triple Crown, horses now will need to run 13 days after the Preakness. Worse, in a sport that constantly preaches how it puts the safety of its animals first, horses will be asked to run the longest race (the Belmont at one-and-a-half miles) after the shortest period of recovery.It is not a switch; it’s a bait-and-switch that still leaves the Triple Crown in peril.“If you want to win the Triple Crown, we’ll see you in Baltimore,’’ Moore said in a Maryland-thumping news conference, conveniently bypassing the fact that if you want to win the Triple Crown, you also have to go to Louisville and Long Island.Moving the Preakness isn’t a bad idea. Creating a series isn’t a bad idea. Doing both without the two sides working together? It is preposterous.The Triple Crown is synonymous with horse racing, as familiar to casual fans as a mint julep or a big hat. Other than the Derby, Preakness and Belmont only one other race – the Breeders’ Cup – pulls in more than $100 million in bets each year.Dating back to 1919, when Sir Barton won all three races, and through 2018, when Justify became its last winner, it is revered for its difficulty and rarity as much as its history.In the course of my career, I have often been asked what the best event is I have covered. It’s tricky. I saw Christian Laettner hit the buzzer-beater against Kentucky and watched the US Olympic hockey team win gold in Milan. But I will say that never have I heard a roar like the one that followed American Pharoah from the final turn to well beyond the finish line in 2015 to break the 37-year Triple Crown hex. It was as cathartic as it was euphoric, a din that lasted well beyond the end of the race.Yet somehow it became a line item in all of this transacting, the greater good lost in the infighting between the three groups (Churchill tried to buy the Preakness’ intellectual property in April, a clear part of Moore’s very loud rebuke that “we cannot control our own future if we don’t own it”) as they jockeyed for position and precious broadcast deals.It is all straight from the college sports playbook, where backdoor meetings are all about self-preservation. Similarly operating without a commissioner to keep things on track and keep the greater good at the forefront, horse racing entities also solved only for themselves. Had they worked together NYRA, Churchill and the Maryland Jockey Club could have met the call to adjust the calendar in a way that kept their races intact and the Triple Crown viable.Instead, Churchill (the SEC) keeps its tradition and lines its pockets with additional revenue through the Derby and the series; NYRA (the Big Ten) gets four series races on its tracks and a share of the revenue pot; and Maryland (the ACC) gets to cling to its own small corner of the market.Lost in all of the self-interest is the only thing that horse racing has going for it.A Triple Crown can still happen, of course. Some have even argued that this new calendar will work out just fine.“I think it’s a great idea,’’ Bob Baffert told CNN Sports.The trainer, and winner of the last two Triple Crowns, believes that the new order keeps the difficulty of winning the Triple Crown alive but, with the space between races, incentivizes the Derby winner to run in the Preakness more.As for the ask of the Belmont, he contends that the “superhorses,’’ will try it and that winning two legs makes it harder to bypass the third, as opposed to a Derby winner who can easily skip out on the Preakness.Maybe he’s right, though recent history would indicate otherwise. And really, it all could have been fixed with just a little teamwork.Instead, horse racing officials decided to follow the college football route and think only of themselves.The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
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