It was still dark on Thursday, Oct. 20, when Irv Willard was jerked out of bed by a police officer. The night air was cold outside his trailer, but flames were already engulfing two homes nearby, which had belonged to his parents.

The fire obliterated the homes, located off Harvest Avenue. The baby blue paint of one gradually turned black as the ceiling collapsed inward. The other home burned until all that was left was its foundation, gnarled metal, a bathtub, kitchen sink and the frame of a shattered glass door.

“Mom and dad worked hard all their life to have that,” Willard said. “And boom.”

Fire investigators confirmed Oct. 20 that the cause of the house fire was arson. No one was in either home at the time, according to investigators, and there are no reported injuries.

“My brother said he was going to burn it down,” Irv Willard told the Redmond Spokesman a few days later. “I didn’t believe him.”

Sometime after 4 a.m. on Thursday morning, one of Willard’s neighbors saw the flames while leaving for work.

“It seemed like it was taking them forever to get here,” said Lina-Mae Steward, one of Willard’s neighbors. “But it really wasn’t.”

According to information provided by Redmond Fire & Rescue, fire crews were dispatched about 4:30 a.m. to the blaze. They found two structures on fire and flames in nearby brush and junipers. The flames ate through the buildings and torched the telephone post and electrical box between the two homes. By the time the cop woke Willard up in his trailer, he said everything was already on fire.

Willard had one word for how he felt when he saw the flames: “Sad.”

Crews stopped the fire from spreading through the brush and trees and contained the structure fire to just the two homes: a singlewide and a doublewide. Willard’s truck and trailer, along with his brother’s tan RV with a red stripe down its side, were spared from the inferno.

Crews remained on the scene throughout the day on Thursday extinguishing hot spots.

“This was a home at one time,” Willard said. “Completely gone, right down to the foundation.”

Willard, a former landscaper who lived in Prineville for 16 years, said he moved back to his parent’s property after his mom, Ramona, asked him to help take care of her and one of his brothers who was disabled. His dad died, his mom passed away earlier this year and then his brother died April 1.

Irv said once he cleans up the property, he’ll sell the land and move somewhere else, possibly to Missouri where he has some friends.

“I got to clean all this up and I’m getting out of here,” he said.