The three fires that started Monday March 6 during a wind event in Oklahoma and Kansas were managed as the NW Oklahoma Complex of Fires and burned over 833,941 acres.
The men in these two videos tell a part of the story as they saw it during the first couple of days. The videos were acquired and posted on the Oklahoma Forestry Services Facebook page by the Southern Area Red Team.
First, is Eric Bond of Knowles, Oklahoma.
Below is a transcript of the video above:
I’m Eric Bond. I’m on the Gate Volunteer Fire Department (18 years). We got paged out Monday the 6th, I believe, at noon or eleven. Something like that, and we went to Knowles and got a one ton brush rig and went to the fire as quick as I could and I was hearing on the radio it was already twenty miles ahead of us. We were trying to save some houses down in there. And my wife had called and wanted to know what she could do. I told her to get one of my boys out of school and to move some cows out of the river. We were trying to save some houses down in there. It was going right down the Cimarron River. And we went over there after a couple of tanks of water, and fought it off a neighbor’s house.
And north of us was a wall of fire but it was going east at the time. And I called my son and asked him he got out of there. And he said “yeah he did” but my wife was still down there trying to get two more cows. And about then the wind changed and that thing came down through there, down river, forty feet high. I told the guy with me “I have to go down there but you don’t have to, you ought to get out.” He said “no, I’m in”! So we went and it turned out there were like six people down there trying to get those cows. And the fire kind of over ran us. We kind of struggled a little getting out of there.
We got through my pasture to the neighbor’s other house and everything there was on fire except the house. And I told everybody to stay in the road because you know they won’t burn up in the road if the house catches on fire. And we just kind of kept it off that house. And another truck showed up eventually, and I don’t know he was but we left him there to watch that house and we went to my house.
And in the meantime, I heard my house burned down. And when we got where we could see it, it did look like it had. But when we got up there the house was ok, but everything else around it burned. All my machinery and trailers, and pretty well everything there, four out buildings, skid loaders, and…pretty well everything there. But the house was ok. And I talked to another guy on our department a while ago and there had been a truck up there. He didn’t know who it was before we got there, but it was there at one time before we got there.
We ended up burning nearly every square foot four miles north. We came out better than some. We lost some cows and some calves (34 cows and calves). The horses are singed a little, but they’re ok.
[How long were you out?] Oh, it was three days from the time they paged until I took my clothes off. And I was sure glad seeing everyone else showing up and kind of get a break, and see what’s left. I had another place in Harper County, and it burnt a little, a hay shed was burnt, 60 bales of hay, and a tractor. I’m pretty fortunate it didn’t burn near all that place.
Next is Charlie Starbuck, chief of the Slapout Fire Department. The largest of the three fires is named after him because he reported it.
Information about how to donate to organizations that are helping the victims of the fires. And here.
