Exotic Animals Killed In Area Fire

By Kelly S.Wray
Times-Democrat Staff

September 5th 1998

                                                                    
    DAVIS OK.-His best friend dead and his beautiful sanctuary for exotic animals burned and destroyed, John Rohloff will cling to memories. That's almost all he has left.  He's thankful his memories lived through one of the most ravaging wildfire outbreaks ever to strike Arbuckle Mountains. And it hurts him deeply that Tosh The Tiger wasn't so lucky.
    "Tosh had been with me a long time,"said Rohloff, owner of a sanctuary for abandoned and abused animals. "He was my best friend."
    A love affair between man and his giant cat was indeed interrupted near Turner Falls Saturday, when wildfires turned a once-plush mountain side into the Valley of Death.
    Like three other exotic cats owned by Rohloff, Tosh was overcome by flames and smoke.
    He perished despite Rohloff's valiant attempts to save the furry one he loved.
    Devastating wildfires roared down southern Oklahoma's Arbuckle Mountains Saturday, consuming some 1,000 acres and killing several exotic animals housed at Rohloff's Creatures Great and Small.
    Creatures Great and Small (CGS) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing a refuge for exotic animals, many of whom were abandoned or abused.
    Tosh The Tiger, who was abandoned by His mother at birth, was the most popular resident.
    "John stayed and tried to get them out of the cages, even when the cages were so hot he could hardly touch them," Dale Phillips, a longtime friend of Rohloff, said.
    "When his hair started to singe, he jumped in a little creek-and that's all that saved his life. He stayed and observed those precious animals die."
    An overheated car ignited the fire, Rohloff said. The car, which eventually burst into flames, was parked on the right side of I-35 going south.
    It caught fire at the top of the mountain, and flames spread west toward the park.
    Park officials considered evacuating the area, but they were informed that the fire was heading away from the park.
    A two-mile section between I-35 and the park was destroyed before fire fighters from 10 different area fire departments brought the blaze under control.     The fire was reported sometime after 4 p.m.
    "At first everything looked fine," Rohloff said. "The wind was blowing away from us, then I felt the wind shift. I thought we had time to move the animals. But the fire formed like a funnel and sucked in oxygen fast. I didn't realize fire could move so fast."
    Even after fire fighters turned away for safety purposes, several people aided Rohloff in his attempt to save the animals. They included Tracy Beasley, Shannon Beasley, Mike Beasley, Robby Carter, Richard Carter, Sharion Carter, Donna Taucher and Vic Garrett.
    Three cougars, a female tiger, exotic birds, reptiles and a lemur were rescued before flames swallowed the drought ridden landscape and home of the owner of the sanctuary.
    Tosh, two lions, and a young Cougar were lost as Rohloff tried to rescue them with a 50-foot wall of flames racing down the mountain.
    With his hair singed, Rohloff sought safety. He ran to a small water hole where he and Tosh had swam many times before.
    Smoke bellowed over him, and 50-foot flames went to his right and left. He remained in the water hole for an hour and a half before he heard Garrett call for him.
    He then made his way down the mountain, following the banks of a river to safety.
    "To be honest, I was really thinking about the animals at that time," Rohloff said. " I was just praying that they didn't suffer. I didn't care about me. At one point, I couldn't breath, and I said, "Lord, it's all right if you want to take me. I'll go with my buds."
    Rohloff hopes to rebuild the sanctuary. Animals will be temporarily stored just outside of Ardmore.

    A special emergency fund has been set up at: Landmark Bank, c/o Creatures Great and Small, P.O. Box 540, Davis, OK   73030, (580) 369-2331.

     THE DAILY OKLAHOMAN

Oklahoma City, OK                                Monday, September 28, 1998

Man Risks His Life In Blaze to Save Beloved Big Cats

                                                                    By Charles T. Jones, Staff Writer

    DAVIS-- Flames exploded above and all around as John Rohloff, his back blistered by the searing heat, found that the fence leading to the cages of his favorite and largest tiger, a lion and a cougar was too hot to touch.

    Wind-driven flames had roared "amazingly fast" down the valley. The wildfire, sparked Sept. 5 by a stalled car along I-35, destroyed thousands of acres of drought-parched timber and grassland in the Arbuckle Mountains in south-central Oklahoma, leaving in its ruins the charred bodies of Tosh, Rohloffs beloved 700lb Siberian-Bengal tiger; a 2- year-old lion, a 1-year-old lioness; and 10-month-old cougar.

    The cats had lived as long as they did because of Rohloffs devotion. He'd rescued them in some cases from people who had nurtured the cats when they were small but were unprepared to raise them to be massive predators.

    Rohloff, 45, lived in a trailer in the woods of the Arbuckles, near the entrance to Turner Falls off State Highway 77, gathering what tax-deductible funds he could to provide a suitable environment for his big cats as part of an operation he called Creatures Great and Small.

   But that was before the conflagration.

    Rohloff, with 10 minutes warning from firefighters, climbed a ridge to monitor a range fire he thought might be headed the other way. Then the wind shifted suddenly.

    Flames sped down the mountain toward his home. "You could hear it and see the 40-to 50 foot flames. I've never seen anything move that fast", he said.  "Those cedars were just exploding".

    Rohloff ran ahead of the flames and, aided by friends , saved four of his smaller cats.

    The larger animals I was saving for last, because I was hoping they'd get a trailer back here to get them. But I wasn't able to do it in time, Rohloff said, his voice choked.

    Neighbors Tracy Beasley, her son Shannon, and Richard Carter, and his son Robby Barber, brought a truck to load one big cat. But it was too late.

    "They would have been blown up- their truck, too- I screamed at them, "Get out of there now!" The truck sped away, and Rohloff ran back into the fire in hopes of leading Tosh to safety on a leash.

    "My trailer blew up, and the trees all around it started exploding, and the fire was so intensely hot it started blistering my back. I couldn't touch the fence, it was so intense. I knew I had just a couple of seconds, so I had to run. It just surrounded the whole area," he said.

    Flailing blindly through the smoke, his head covered with a drenched T-shirt, Rohloff stumbled toward a water-filled sinkhole in an otherwise dry creek.

    "I couldn't see anything. I basically knew that it was there somewhere. I just kind of stumbled through and found it and jumped in. The fire rushed right over me," he said.

    He crouched in the hole for an hour and a half, sucking life from an air pocket beneath a rock ledge, as tinder-dry, resin-rich cedars exploded overhead.

    "I ran out of air. Then there was a little puff of wind that came from out of nowhere, and I was able to breathe another 20 to30 minutes and was able to make it," he said.

    "I feel just fortunate to be breathing," he said last week.

    The site of Creatures Great and Small "looks like the moon or something now," said Rohloff, a former record producer and animal handler at Arbuckle Wilderness.

    His surviving cats are in temporally quarters, and Rohloff is building pens and seeking tax-deductible funds to rebuild.

    "I've gotten lots of calls from people wanting me to do it. " I think my life was spared for a reason-- to do that. Otherwise, I don't think I'd be here if I wasn't supposed to continue on with it. So there was a reason for all of this," he said.

    Rohloff grieves for his beloved Tosh. He had raised Tosh because the cub had been rejected by its mother."He was a special guy, a special gorgeous animal and quite a character. We did  lots of educational programs; he was kind of an icon."

    He thinks his life's mission is to save big cats and provide healthy habitats along with educating the public on endangered species and the environment.

    "He has a rare, great gift", said Rohloff's friend Dale Phillips, president of Old Surety Life Insurance Co. of Oklahoma City.     Phillips said it costs Rohloff $300 to $400 a month to feed his remaining cats. Donations may be sent to an emergency fund established at a Davis bank.