What’s the worst thing in the world? It’s definitely not losing a game

Every heart stopped in this big little city at 4:14 p.m. Tuesday. No one thought to tell the game clock.

On the west side of Porterville, Elise Marie and the Monache High softball team were taking batting practice when they noticed a soaring plume of smoke to the east. Word came that the Porterville City Library was on fire.

“How am I supposed to turn my book back in?” she asked her dad when he picked her up from practice. Elise and her two brothers were at the library two days prior, picking out new reads with Mom.

On the other side of campus, the Marauders boys basketball team was going through warm-ups in a stuffy gym. Monache senior TrayVon Bradford glided through the layup line before the final game of his career. He’d score 28 points but lose the playoff game to Redwood, thinking it was the worst thing in the world.

None us knew how much worse the worst could be.

Three miles to the east, Porterville Fire Department firefighters were carrying their unconscious captain, Ramon “Ray” Figueroa, out of the library inferno, one applying desperate pumps to his chest as they loaded him into an ambulance on Thurman Avenue. The 35-year-old father to a kindergartener and preschooler had charged nose-first into the flames and black smoke in search of a woman in a wheelchair who wasn’t even in the library anymore.

One mile to the south, Porterville High senior Nash Wobrock dropped the first of a game-high 23 points on the visiting Atascadero Greyhounds. His Panthers would win the playoff opener 63-55, and they would celebrate at midcourt, not knowing the heart of their city was burning to the ground.

Half a mile to the north, Figueroa was declared dead by the frantic staff at Sierra View Medical Center. He would be given an all-cars escort to the coroner’s office in Tulare while the two-alarm fire still burned.

Three miles to the east, Granite Hills High sophomore Daniel Ruiz scored once, and then twice, as the top-seeded Grizzlies rolled 4-1 over Kennedy of Delano – Figueroa’s hometown – in a boys soccer semifinal playoff game under the Rankin Stadium lights.

Back on Main Street, the Porterville Fire Department held an outdoor press conference a block away from the still-raging fire. This is when we all were told that this story was about so much more than books and learning centers and childhood memories.

One of our firefighters was dead. A second was unaccounted for.

The second fireman was Patrick Jones, just 25 years young. He sprinted into the burning fire with Figueroa and other first responders to make sure the burning building was cleared. He didn’t come out when the others did. Any hopes of finding him alive ended when the roof collapsed on a two-story building that had stood at the city’s center since 1953.

“I can’t believe this is really happening,” said Eddie Patino, a former Porterville football and wrestling champion who came downtown to watch the library burn with disbelieving eyes past 11 p.m. He scrolled through his smartphone to show pictures of his daughter, running down the library aisles two weeks before.

Just like that, the games were just games.

Two firefighters, gone.

Two 13-year-old boys, arrested and charged as minors for arson and murder with special circumstances.

What else matters?

Monache was one-and-done in the boys basketball playoffs, and no one talked about it come morning. Porterville would be eliminated on Thursday night, just hours before firefighters finally carried Jones out of the rubble, and no one cried foul.

Granite Hills would lose in the section championship soccer final Friday, just two hours after thousands huddled together a block from the library ruins to memorialize their newest heroes. No one filed a protest.

Everyone is crushed. No one can move forward. This is a city that’s big enough for three high schools, but small enough to be on a first-name basis. Most of us didn’t know Figueroa or Jones, and yet we are overwhelmed with grief for them.

So, we tell our kids they died heroes, running into the flames as all others ran out. We hug Tina the dispatcher, and Krystal the ER nurse, and Joseph the former EMT, because their hurt is a shared hurt.

The games go on. We’ll just never be the same.

This story was originally published February 22, 2020 at 8:23 AM.