![]() ![]() I was thinking, ‘Thank God we made it.’ But to see that man have to worry about his wife and two daughters - the look in his eyes was just devastating. “Once we got down I was no longer thinking about death. “The look on his face was just pure loss,” Luciano said. They’d all die if they went back up there. Would the brothers please, please, take him up to get them. There was a man at the bottom, a resident of Chalet Village, who waved Luciano and Fulton down to say that his wife and daughters were still up there. At exactly 9:11 p.m., they made it to the bottom, where flashing police cars blocked anyone from going back up the mountain. If you can’t see you can follow our taillights down.’” He goes, ‘I can’t see.’ I said, ‘Just pull over a little bit. “The man cracks his window and it’s an old guy. I’m banging on his window,” Luciano said. On the video, Luciano screams and curses. But it wasn’t long before they encountered another obstacle - a stopped car, blocking the road. It was certainly possible - on the way down they passed a body, likely someone who’d succumbed to smoke inhalation while fleeing.įulton backed up and rammed the truck forward, somehow making it over the branches and back onto the road. “When I saw that big tree, I thought seriously, this is it,” Luciano said. A huge, bowled-over tree, the trunk covering the right side of the road and the thinner top part covering the left. What if Wylie Oakley Road was blocked off, too? Were they about to die? What if they encountered another telephone pole, Luciano wondered. “Telephone poles have like 300 pounds of tension on either side, but once that burns it’s just falling over.” Luciano narrates the video with panicked disbelief. “The further you went down the worse it got.” Propane tanks burst with regularity, sending out waves of heat that the two men could feel inside the truck. All around, cabins were going up in flame, the busted-out window frames filled with flickering orange. Smoke was thick all around, driving visibility to almost nothing as Fulton strove to keep the speed up. It was hot inside the truck, maybe 110 degrees with the AC on. ![]() “It did not end until we got to the very bottom.” “That ended up being where hell started,” Luciano said. A downed telephone pole blocked the road, and they’re forced to turn around in search of an alternate route. The video, which has amassed countless views after being published on news outlets worldwide, shows lines of flame burning on the periphery of frame as the truck speeds downhill. Then, they were off, hurtling down Ski Hill Road. ![]() They spent only 90 seconds inside the house, rushing to gather a few emergency items, some personal effects such as the ashes of Luciano’s deceased father, and the Doberman, Red. Not even on the ham radio that Luciano and his stepbrother and roommate Anthony Fulton, 30, keep for just such an emergency. Firefighters responded to two wildfires late April 14 near Fontana Lake in Graham County.… ![]()
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