Storied Tri-City home survived decades of disasters. Then the Bofer Canyon fire hit

The house that George Austin built survived the infamous 1948 flood that left much of the Kennewick shoreline under water.

It survived a subsequent move to the relative safety of the Kennewick foothills.

It survived wind-driven fires in 1958 and again in the early 1990s.

But George Austin’s house, one of the most storied in the Tri-Cities, fell victim to the wind-driven inferno that swept through the hills of south Kennewick Saturday afternoon.

George and Johanna Austin moved into the house in 1940, two weeks before the birth of their second daughter, Sallie Austin, now McMillin.

McMillin, 78 and living near the Kennewick Fred Meyer store, is mourning the dramatic loss of her childhood home, a structure that experienced more than its share of drama.

With smoke still hanging in the air Monday, McMillin shared memories of the house most Kennewick residents consider a historic touch point.

George Austin hired a Seattle architect to design his dream home, which he originally built on an idyllic site next to the Columbia River, west of the Columbia Park golf course.

Disaster struck just eight years later.

McMillin was just 8 when the 1948 floods sent the Columbia River into the streets of Kennewick and most other cities in its path. When an earthen berm failed, neighbors rallied to save the house, encircling it with a three-foot ring of sandbags.

Throughout the ordeal, the Austin family stayed put. Sallie and her sister remembered the house echoing after the rugs were taken up to keep dry. Beds were hoisted onto blocks, in case, and a fleet of gas-powered pumps kept the interior mostly dry.

McMillin isn’t sure why her parents didn’t send their daughters to higher ground, except that her mother resisted being apart from her children. They never even stayed with their grandmothers, who lived in Pasco and Kennewick.

After the flood drama, George Austin moved his family and his house to higher ground.

Instead of building anew, he took his house with him, hiring a Spokane mover to haul the four-bedroom structure, intact, up the hill to what is now South 45th Street and South Ely.

George contacted his old architect and had a rec room and two bathrooms added. He also added stables and raised quarter horses.

“It was my dad’s dream home,” McMillin said.

The Austins were always mindful of the threat of fire on the hillside.

The first happened in 1958.

As with the Bofer Canyon Fire, wind drove the ‘58 blaze. It hit fast.

George Austin was in the hospital at the time, in traction because of a bad back. He heard his house was on fire on the news. A man of action, Austin detached himself from his traction gear, waived off an alarmed nurse and hailed a taxi to get him home.

By the time he arrived, the fire had passed and the house was safe.

The taxi driver took George — his daughters called him by his first name — back to the hospital.

After that, the Austins made sure to have a fire guard plowed around the house each spring.

George Austin died in 1961. His widow remained, eventually living there with her second husband, Art Colby.

“Fire was always a concern. My mother would never leave on the Fourth of July,” she recalled.

Fire would come through again in the early ‘90s, scorching the neighborhood but leaving the house alone.

Colby died in 1998 and Johanna in 2006.

After Johanna’s death, her daughters sold the place, which was owned by Lorrie and Bruce Ratchford when the fire hit. McMillin contemplated moving back, but said the old family home was too much work and she liked living nearer to city services.

The Ratchfords built a family home next door and apparently used “Johanna’s house” for private events. Both homes were destroyed Saturday.

While McMillin is mourning the loss of her childhood home, she said she’s grateful the fire didn’t take more homes.

Sunday, she headed to her old neighborhood to see what was left of it — two chimneys and a low, charred wall and a small house once used by a caretaker.

McMillin thought of her mother and the fear of wildfire that proved so prescient.

“I’m pleased that she has left this world behind and was not here to see this,” she said.

This story was originally published August 13, 2018 at 5:15 PM.