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2014–2026 · THE DOCUMENTED MODERN COURSE, AND THE NAMED GAP BEFORE IT
The department's-eye record is its own paper — incident releases written by the department, in the department's voice — and run in order it reads differently from the disaster narrative: on the night of 18 December 2014 crews were called just before 11:30 p.m. to the 12300 block of Duxbury Court in Harris Township, arrived within minutes to find flames and smoke coming through the roof, and held the fire to the attic; the occupants were home and got out (Clay Fire news release, 18 Dec. 2014). On New Year's Day 2016, just after 8:24 p.m., crews answered the 51000 block of Sussex Point Drive in Granger, where the homeowner was already trying to fight an attic fire himself; the investigation found the fire in the cellulose insulation around a fireplace chimney flue that had not been cleaned in a couple of years, and the release folded the fire into the department's "Keep the Wreath Red" prevention count (release, 1 Jan. 2016). On 30 July 2016, at 6:45 p.m., units answered the 13000 block of Anderson Road in Granger for an unattached garage and found a 40-by-50-foot pole barn with fire through the roof; the fire was under control within minutes of arrival, started, it appeared, at a wood-burning stove in the corner, and hurt nobody (release, 30 July 2016). On 21 June 2017, shortly after 5:00 p.m., crews reached the 12000 block of Campfire Drive in Granger in two minutes and thirty-five seconds from dispatch — the release prints its own response time — found a significant working fire in an attached garage hot enough to melt the vinyl siding on the neighboring house, knocked it down within minutes, and reported the garage a total loss and two Clay firefighters injured, minor and non-life-threatening (release, 21 June 2017).
The one great fire of the modern course, whole from the responders' side: the Juday Creek Golf Course clubhouse, in Harris Township inside the CDP, on 26 August 2024. Firefighters were called just before 6:00 a.m. after a passerby saw flames — the building had no one in it to raise the alarm, and Chief Jaren Kilian said on the record that he believed the building had been on fire for quite some time before the first crews arrived. The fire had already burned through the floor and was extending into the attic; crews went defensive right away, fighting the building from outside as a total loss in progress rather than entering it. Thirty-six hours later Clay firefighters were still cycling back to check the scene for hotspots, unable to go inside, with Fire Marshal Ron Melser stating the cause was still unknown; the owners were Linda Rogers — a sitting state senator — and Mike Rogers, with Michelle Wittig as owner and general manager of the course. The property and rebuild course (replacement ground broken 22 September 2026) is carried in the build's other fragments and is not repeated here; the department's-eye facts are the late discovery, the defensive decision, and the two-day hotspot watch, and they are the fire's record from the firemen's side. The gap before the paper: no department's-eye course for any earlier fire — no barn, school, or church fire with a response narrative — survives in the open record reached. Clay Fire's online release archive and the news record run from the 2010s; searches of the Tribune and WNDU record for historic Clay and Harris township fires returned no response-side account. The pre-2010 great fires of these townships are a NAMED GAP inside this row: settler the South Bend Tribune's archive via Hoosier State Chronicles and Clay Fire's internal incident files, neither open to this section.