POCATELLO — When Pocatello resident Steve Leaman received a text notification of the wildfire near Century High School a few weeks back, he said he had to pull his truck over on the side of road just to keep from retching.

Because five years ago Wednesday, Leaman’s home along with 65 others in Bannock County burned when the Charlotte Fire, fueled by high winds and exceedingly dry and arid conditions, wreaked havoc through the Pocatello Valley.

“It’s hard to talk about it but life goes on,” Leaman said about losing everything that hot and sunny afternoon on June 28 in 2012. “Just today I was on my tractor making fire lines around the new place and making sure the tall grass is cut back.”

Leaman said the Charlotte Fire burned so hot that it melted a collection of pennies inside a 10-gallon milk jug down to the size of a basketball.

Though the fire claimed no human casualties, the damage to homes and structures in the area was extensive. Many Pocatello firefighters say it will forever be a day that’s scorched into their memories.

“I was in an ambulance at the time and was working another call when I saw the call come into Pocatello Valley’s fire system,” said Pocatello Fire Capt. Shane Grow.

“I looked up and saw the smoke and rushed into the station to tell our battalion chief because we could see the wind pushing it this way. I told the battalion chief that this isn’t our fire, but it’s going to be pretty soon.”

Grow said that at that moment, they activated everyone and everything to try and stop it before it got to the city.

“We knew just from the weather and the size of the smoke plume that it was coming our way,” Grow said.

Nathan Hauser, a 10-year veteran Pocatello firefighter, said he was at the station on his day off filing a report for a hazmat call when saw the smoke plume outside the station window.

“I was like, well, I might as well just head over to station five and get my gear,” Hauser said.

Another Pocatello firefighter, Andy Holmes said it was miraculous that nobody was injured in the fire.

“This was by far the biggest fire we’ve had in this town,” Holmes said. “We lost 64 homes in the county and 2 homes in Pocatello and it’s amazing that we didn’t have any fatalities considering the size of the fire. It was a miracle in of itself that nobody got hurt.”

More than 5,000 people were evacuated as a result of the fire, which burned 1,038 acres and was the most devastating in the history of Bannock County.

Mike Mason, another Pocatello firefighter, said that without the amount of interagency support — which included fire response teams from Pocatello, Chubbuck, Fort Hall, the Idaho National Laboratory and crews from as far north as the Treasure Valley area — there is no telling how much worse the fire could have been.

“It was the middle of the afternoon in the middle of the week so it was likely that parents were at work and kids could have been home alone,” Mason said. “Weather was a big factor in stopping the fire but all the help from various agencies and air support was huge on this fire as well.”

The fire was contained within the first day. But for four or five days after crews continued to battle spot fires.

In the wake of the destruction, Hauser said there were hundreds, if not thousands, of community members who came together to chop down the charred-up trees and help families sort through the rubble of what used to be homes and other structures.

“It didn’t matter that there were people who lived way out in Chubbuck and weren’t affected because they probably knew somebody who was,” he said.

On Friday, Leaman hosted a Charlotte Fire barbecue at his new residence, which rests just 24 inches away from where the rubble of his dream cabin rested in the aftermath of the blaze.

“What’s been amazing,” Leaman said, “is listening to all the stories, like one man who was carrying water in a wheelbarrow to try and put out the blaze. It’s been a total nightmare but you just have to keep going.”

Leaman said that five years later he can tell which families were affected and which ones weren’t, because those who lost everything like himself, are now taking the correct steps to try and prevent tragedy from striking again.

“Of this whole 25 acres, I have here seven acres of it that’s green,” Leaman said. “I got a piece of heaven here and I’m scared to death to lose it again.”