In August 1910, forest fires burned millions of acres in Idaho, Montana, and Washington. On the night of August 20, engineer Johnnie Mackedon, returning from a trip to St. Paul Pass, found the Falcon siding on fire, where more than one hundred terrified men, women, and children had gathered on the platform of the smoldering depot. He coupled to a flatcar on the adjoining siding, and everyone scrambled aboard for a harrowing ride to the safety of Tunnel 27, crossing bridges that appeared as walls of flame while the passengers lay down on the deck to shield themselves from the heat. Old-time railroaders also told of one man who died after panicking and leaping from another rescue train, which continued to Tunnel 20 and saved the rest of its passengers. After the fire passed, the other passengers buried him next to the tracks. He is assumed to have been a railroad laborer known as a gandy-dancer, and his death may have been the only fatality from the 1910 fire in the Loop Creek drainage.