Laura,

We are fine at our end of Love County although we were out at fires all day and most of the night. I think my hubby and son arrived home around 5 or 6 a.m. I went to sleep at 4 a.m. The fires here are not out, not by any means, and I believe today will be a long, hard day. There are firefighters still out at the fire scene as I write this and I feel like we will be out there for days yet, not hours--days.

I need to get into the kitchen and get busy cooking meals for the firefighters to have today, but first I want to say this (and I am sure the same is true for every area that had fires yesterday)--I am grateful the lives of all our firefighters were spared. Very, very grateful. Firefighters are heroes every day, but what they did here yesterday was truly incredible. In high-wind conditions in which wildfire could not be stopped and in which visability was pretty much zero, they still battled valiantly to contain the fires as much as possible, to save lives of people and their animals, to save as many structures as possible and to get people evacuated and out of the line of danger.

Our community supported us in so many ways--with assistance evacuating residents, providing shelter for them and their animals, providing food and drinks for emergency personnel, providing medical support and services--the effort by personnel from our local electric co-op and hospital and churches was awesome. Law enforcement officers from all over the county left their own areas of jurisdiction to rush to the parts of the county that were, literally, in the line of fire and saved lives by getting people out of their homes and to safety.

Today there remain many areas of concern that are still burning although somewhat contained and more-or-less under control. What I do know is this. In spite of the devastation from the fires, the people here will pull together and get through this crisis. This is Oklahoma, after all, and that is what we do here.

I hope all those affected by yesterday's tornadoes in OK and Missouri are doing well today too. It has been a very rough week for portions of our region. In part of western North Texas near us, at least two rural towns were virtually wiped off the map by yesterday's wildfires and at least 2 deaths occurred. As bad as it was, it could have been much worse for all of us so I think we all just feel an overwhelming sense of gratitude that everyone survived. Some days, survival is all you can ask for, and yesteday was that kind of day.

Dawn

Dawn and all those other facing fires, tornadoes and other extreme weather my thoughts and prayers go out to you all. We've had fires here but so far have been fortunate and none that severe yet like last year. My sister and brother in law had just rebuilt the fence and making plans to reseed some grass on their ranch if it every rains enough from last years fire and last Sat. night a power line went down and burned some of it again. The local fire department was able to get it under control this time before it threatened anyone houses. This is NW of Guymon. But we haven't experienced anything yet like you have. Just read the news about Mena, Ark. That isn't too far from you is it Dawn? Yes some days we just do the best we can and hope and pray for a better one tomorrow. Pray things get better soon. Know how hard it is on everyone. Jay

elkwc - Dawn is probably out helping the firefighters, but she is not near Arkansas. If you look at a map of Oklahoma and find the lowest point that Oklahoma dips into Texas (follow I-35 south) then that little dip is where Dawn is. She is surrounded on three sides by Texas.

I have been hoping that others would check in because we do have members near Choctaw and in the SE part of the state as well. I hope everyone is OK. Let us know folks.

We're still in one piece here bit last night was pretty hairy in this corner of the state. A tornado passed a bit to the north of us but don't know if it was ever confirmed as having touched down -- just heard about that one from folks. Another one passed just to the southeast of us -- saw it with my own eyes and it appeared to be touched down but there's a hill blocking the bottom part of that view so might not have been. Both scurried off to the east, only pelting us with nickel-sized hail and goosebumps. Watched the skies from the greenhouse.

Mena's just 30-45 minutes to our southeast, iirc. Pretty little town. :-(

Diane

Diane,

I was thinking about you when I heard about Mena this morning. That one was kind of close.

Thirty years ago today, Wichita Falls, TX, which is a bit west/southwest of us had a horrible tornado that killed about 45 people. My brother lived there at the time because he was attending Midwestern State University. I always have "tornadoes on the brain" on April 10th because that was such a wicked one--it destroyed 3100 homes, destroyed countless others and left over 20,000 people homeless.

It doesn't seem fair that wildfire season is dragging into tornado season. Enough is enough already!

Dawn

I've been to Marietta before. Took some horses to Dr. Nichols a vet there. And was just brain dead this morning when I posted. Glad everyone seems to of survived ok. Hope everyone gets some relief soon. Jay

Jay,

Doc Nichols is our vet! Best vet we've ever had.

He must be very good with horses (we don't have horses) because people bring horses to him from as far away as Stephenville, TX (and with Tarleton State Univ. there in Stephenville, you'd think they'd have a lot of good vets there).

We still have fire crews out, but their numbers are dwindling. Fire conditions look good until about next Tues. or Wed. If rain falls, even Tues. and Wed. night not be too bad.

All the old-timers who have lived here forever say yesterday's fires were the worst ever in our county and that no one has every seen anything like them in terms of speed and magnitude. I hope we never see their like again.

What made yesterday especially bad here was that it struck in the heart of Love County's "horse country". You should have seen all the horse trailers going in and out of the evacuating area....not only folks moving their own horses, but their friends....and even strangers....with horse trailers coming into the area to help evacuate the animals. People are so good here.

Dawn

Dawn,
Dr. Nichols is as good "leg man" on lameness on horses I've been around. Knew one other at KSU who I would put in his class and he retired. When I was involved in horses and training heavily I had reason to use several. I knew a fair amount myself. But was totally impressed the time we used him. I would say we are further than Stephenville. Through the years I sent a few down to see him. And very friendly and just a great man and office staff. We were told by several vets that the horse I took would never be sound and able to be used again. And he was a very good horse. I was roping on him in a rodeo three days after the trip down there. And as long as we kept him shod like he said he stayed sound and lived another ten years or so.
Have thought about going down in that area fishing on the big lake. Hope the fires let up so you can get that garden planted so I can reel in a few veggies while I'm there. LOL.
Hope today is a better day for everyone involved with the fires. They are saying a good chance of rain over a wide area. That will really help if it happens. Jay

Jay,

I had to come inside to start a big crockpot of taco soup because the firefighters are already out at the fire scene again, poor things. So, of course, while the meat is browning I am "computing" instead of "planting". Going back out soon though.

If you ever make it down here to go fishing, you'd better come get some veggies! The more I give away, the less I have to preserve for winter. :)

I am already seeing a bunch of gray clouds to the west....roughly in the direction of Wichita Falls. Our worst weather, in terms of danger, comes here from there so I hope that is not an ominous sign. We aren't expecting rain until tonight at the earliest, if the forecasters are right, so I hope to get a lot done today before the "promised" rain arrives. The forecast on our weather radio says a 100% chance of rain so the forecasters seem pretty sure of themselves.

I hope everyone gets some rain this weekend and that the Easter Bunny forgives us for hoping for rain on his day.

Dawn

The tornadoes hit on either side of us in NE OK, missed Grove but got Vinita and Miami, as far as I know no real damage but I was pretty scared as I was home alone.

While watching Tulsa 6 weather, saw the fires near Choctaw, called to check on daughter and family,found out they were at that moment being evacuated. They lost everything except lives and pets. 10 homes in their neighborhood were burned to the ground but no one was injured. The fire in Choctaw was started at a junkyard by a man cutting up a car body with a torch.

Firefighters were injured, one severely in the fire in Wellston.

Kathi,

Y'all have had quite an eventful week....and not in a good way.

I am glad the tornadoes missed you. I hate being home alone during tornadoes.

I am so sorry about your daughter's family's loss of their home and possessions, but relieved they and the pets got out of there.

I heard about the injured firefighters and hope they make a speedy recovery.

I am sure the man in Choctaw didn't mean to start the fire, but don't you just want to shake him and ask him what he was thinking, using a torch on a very windy day with Extreme Fire Danger and a Red Flag Fire Warning?

We have firefighters back out today in NW Love County for about the tenth straight day. They are working reignition of hot spots from the Thursday fire. They were out all day yesterday until around midnight. They sound pretty peppy today, so they must have gotten some sleep last night. We need for the rain to come and help put out the remains of these fires.

Dawn

I didn't have a tornado, but you wouldn't know it from looking at my yard. We are in the process of building a safe room/tornado shelter. Only the pad is poured so far and we can't continue until we have several "rain free" days, so I hope it rains on all of you (and the hot spots) and not on me. LOL

As the wind came up and the sky turned dark here, we laughed that standing on the newly poured pad and holding onto the rebar didn't offer much protection. The contractor can't form it up until we are sure there is no rain coming because it is attached to our house. We are using the styrofoam forms that remain in place after the pour and it would create a "swimming pool" with a door into our house. We have a pump in place now to keep it pumped off because we are expecting rain tomorrow. We were glad to get enough dry days to get the pad poured because the first day they worked in a light rain which quickly made a mud hole.

I have wintersown flowers that need to go into the ground but there is still too much activity in my yard to trust putting those small plants into a bed, so I am still trying to baby them along.

I have a few veggies planted but only the sugar snap peas are in the garden. I have greens in a big container and a few toms and peppers that are still small and in small pots. I didn't plant as many as I normally plant. I am glad because it is tough enough to take care of what I have with all of this going on. In the midst of all of this, I am trying to paint a very large room that has a lot of windows, doors, bookcases, etc. It is one of those slow painting jobs and everything has to have more than one coat. I gave myself the day off today. I may never finish. LOL

I feel so sorry for all of those that lost their homes and although it has to be terrible for them, I hope they were insured to the max, so they don't have the financial burden on top of all of the other loses. I am afraid of fire. When I was a child we had a house in the next block that caught on fire twice. I remember sitting in the window of my parents bedroom and watching it burn. That is a vision that never goes away.

Our homes are fairly close together here and we have way too many cedar trees. A house across the cove from us burned a couple of years ago and I was concerned about the houses around it, but they were able to limit it to the one house. It was in one of those locations that is hard for the fire department to get to also. At least we have easy access on our side of the cove.

We watched a garage burn across the lake this year which turned out to be a neighbor of Kathi. Poor Kathi, she has had too much fire this year. I think a "plant shower" for her daughter is a good idea, when they get into a new home.

I thought I'd check in on the OK forum to see how everyone is doing. Kathi, I'm so sorry for your daughter's home. What a loss.

Three weeks ago, and again last Monday evening we saw fires on the hills between McAlester and Atoka as we drove back to Texas from Tahlequah. The fire 3 weeks ago looked like it was threatening homes. I felt so sorry for those people, and wondered how the fires were started, as they were up in the hills. The smoke was blowing across Highway 69 so thick we could smell it even with the windows closed. And now this.

I hope all of you got lots of rain to help put out the fires.

Okiedawn, are you with the fire department?

Sally

Carol,

I'm glad y'all are getting a safe room built. I don't mind the storm cellar and its' steep steps now, but I bet I won't like it much in 15 or 20 years. I suppose one of these days we'll build an above-ground safe room too.

I am afraid of fire too and Thursday it got way too close to us. We had taken dinner (chicken enchilada casserole!), snacks, water and Gatorade to a small (about 15) group of firefighters at the far western end of the wildfire and found them (and us) almost totally surrounded by flames on all sides. It was scarey for a few minutes. A fire chief from one of the local depts. tried to lead us back east but we got to where visibility was zero and fire was on both sides of the road. It was nerve-wracking and I'll never go into such poor visibility in a fire again. Finally, we turned around and headed back west on Pike Rd., then came back south on Hwy. 76 until we hit Hwy 32 at Leon and could safely go back to town that way. Then we reloaded and took meals to the firefighters at the east end of the fire. Usually we stay at the Incident Command Post where the Incident Commander and tankers are staged. Thursday's fire moved too fast, though, and the firefighters were constantly running from one fire to another, so we chased them down and gave them meals, snacks and drinks. It was insane.

Sally,

I am a registered, insured member of the fire department but I do not fight fires. I am the support person who does what is known as "Fire Rehab" which basically means making sure the firefighters have water, Gatorade or Powerade, snacks and meals. It also means watching them medically and having the Incident Commander or medics pull them out of a fire scene if they are developing heat exhaustion or smoke inhalation issues, or other medical issues. I always try to carry a bucket of wet towels to cool them down.

Fire Rehab is essential and, yet, most "civilians" don't even know it exists as an official function. Firefighters burn huge amounts of calories and also sweat out a lot of water. It takes a lot of drinks and food to keep them functioning, especially if a grass fire or wild fires last for hours and even days. Our firefighters have been out every day since about April 2nd, I think, and our county's rehab personnel have stayed busy just trying to keep them fed and hydrated.

I follow both the fire weather forecasts, via several fire-related websites, and the fire activity in our county very carefully and prepare accordingly. Most days, if I think fires are going to happen, I start the firefighter's meals around 8 a.m., often baking cookies, muffins, coffee cake, cobblers, etc. in the morning and then starting a pot of soup or stew or chili around 11 a.m. so I can take them lunch, or pour it into a crockpot to keep it warm for dinner. Sometimes I make them non-crockpot meals like chicken or sausage balls or whatever. On days that an unexpected fire pops up and I haven't been cooking, they get cold cut sandwiches or hot dogs or hamburgers--whatever is quickest.

This week their favorite meals were Chicken Tortilla Soup, which was their Sunday night dinner, and 15-bean soup with sausage which was their Monday night dinner. They are smart firefighters, though, and eat and drink whatever they are given and are happy to have it--even if it is peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I do kind of spoil them with the home-baked goodies, but they are worth it.

On Thursday morning, my friend Fran who does Fire Rehab for our dept. along with me, made Chicken Enchilada and Beef Enchilada casseroles, and I made taco soup and three kinds of cookies. When the fires broke out and our pagers went off, we already had 4 coolers of iced-down bottled water and Gatorade on the truck, 10 additional cases stacked up beside the coolers to refill them as we used up the cold drinks, a 5-gallon jug of sweet tea, and 6 cases of snacks. Then we threw our prepared meals into the truck and left.

When we arrived at the staging center at our local elecric co-op building, the co-op employees who'd opened up their community room to serve as a Rehab Room were confused about how we already had that much food and drinks ready seemingly instantly. We just said "We knew this was going to happen today, so we got up and starting cooking about 8 a.m." They looked at us questioningly like "Are you psychic?" but we didn't have time to explain. If we'd had time, I would have told them that, after a week of non-stop fire, and with a Red Flag Fire Warning issued by the NWS, and with steady wind in the upper 30s and gusts forecast to be in the 40s to upper 50s, it was clear fire would happen in our county and it would be catastrophic.

My husband is a professional law enforcement officer/firefighter (in his dept. everyone used to be cross-trained to do both, although budget cuts don't allow that any more) and my son is a professional firefighter. My hubby also is the chief of our local volunteer fire department and our son is a volunteer firefighter with the same dept. If I didn't do Fire Rehab, I'd never even see DH or DS during fire season. : )

In our county, there's a very dedicated group of about 15 people who do Fire Rehab for every fire of any duration, and there are additional people who help out with the really big fires.

The largest group of people we generally feed is maybe 50 to 75 firefighters and other personnel like police and medics. This year, though, we've had several bigger-than-average fires that required a bigger-than-average response. I am tired and ready for it all to be over. Fire season normally runs thru May though, so we may not be finished yet. Today's rains have really helped though.

I hate fire and it scares me, but the thought of our firefighters being out there all day without drinks and food is unacceptable, so I almost always end up out there with them.

Dawn

Of course it makes sense that the firefighters would need the kind of support you and your co-workers provide, but you're right, I never thought about it. How wonderful it is that you're there to do that kind of work. How very interesting.

I was just talking with my DH about the fires being in the spring, and what does that mean for the summertime? I thought summer would be more of a fire season, but you said fire season lasts through May. I guess fire season is more in the winter, then?

Sally

Sally,

Here in Oklahoma fire season can happen at anytime depending on what the weather is doing. The severity and length of fire season varies in different parts of the state and that makes sense because some areas get 15-20" of rain a year and some get 50" or 60" or even more.

In a "normal" year (and I am not sure you can ever use the word "normal" in reference to the Oklahoma climate and weather), the worst of fire season runs from approximately February through May. Why? Because the previous season's grasses and brush are dormant and have dried out substantially since they froze in late fall or early winter. Add to that the aggressive late winter and spring winds and you have a formula for fire disaster.

On the occasional day that a very strong dry line accompanied by very high winds precedes a strong storm front like we had Thursday, any fires that start will be catastrophic. We probably have 10-20 days a year, mostly in November through April, with the potential to give some portion of Oklahoma the horrid fires we experienced Thursday. Often, though, these are very localized fires that only affect a lightly-populated rural county or two and, subsequently, they do not get much media attention. Sometimes nothing big happens on Red Flag Fire Warning Days, but sometimes fires do occur on those days--we had one day like that here in Nov., one in Feb., I think or maybe late Jan., and one day in March. All three of those times, the same general area burned here that also burned last Thursday, although Thursday's fires were larger and more widespread. The northwestern corner of Love County stays substantially drier than the rest of Love County so the fires there tend to be worse in normal conditions. In the moderate to severe drought like we've had here since Aug. 2007 it all escalates and becomes even worse.

Fire danger tends to run higher for the western half of the state than for the eastern half of the state most of the time and it also runs higher for the southern half of the state than for the northern half of the state.

Here in OK, we are famous for our tornadoes, and sometimes it seems like we have a Severe Thunderstorm watch or warning, or a Tornado Watch or Warning almost every day from April through June or July. However, we also have tons of Fire Weather Watches and Red Flag Fire Warnings from late autumn through late spring.

IF normal rain falls in March-April-May-June, there is little fire danger. If July is dry, we often start seeing hayfield and pasture fires in some parts of OK (usually southern and western OK) in July or August. Often those fires are started by a spark from tractors, mowers, rakes, etc. during haying or from sparks from welding equipment as people are doing fencing type work or other welding jobs.

In s drought situation, grass fires and wild fires can start soon after the first really hard freeze of autumn causes vegetation to freeze and brown. That happened in October 2005 here in Love County and, with little rain falling, our fire season ran until April 2006. Then, after April's rain, nothing much fell and we were having bad fires again by July. By contrast, 2007 was pretty wet--at least through July here--and we didn't have all that many fires in the fall of 2007 or early winter 2008. Fall 2008-Winter 2009 have been much worse.

I don't remember a bad wildfire year at all from 1999-2004, so it seems something has changed since then.

I can't tell you how common wildfire is in the area where you purchased property, but it seems much less common there than it is in our part of OK. You do have a lot of Oklahoma Forest Service and Bureau of Indian Affairs firefighters stationed in eastern OK because I do think (obviously) that forest fires are more common there.

Dawn

Thanks for the info, Dawn. It's obvious now why winter time would be fire time - one of those forehead slapping duh! moments.

I'm well aware of the tornado threat in Oklahoma. I lived in Norman for 10 years when I was a girl, and my BIL lost his house in the tornadoes that struck OKC several years ago.

Sally

Sally,

Tornadoes in my part of Oklahoma tend to be a minor nuisance. They seem to be mild here compared to storms further north in central OK. Just about every year we have days (have had 3 or 4 this year already) where we see "little" tornadoes come dancing across the sky and not touching down. Everyone just kind of stops what they are doing and watches them, or takes shelter if the tornadoes come too close and seem like they might actually touch down. In Love County, we'll have a touchdown that does damage maybe only once every three years and usually it is minor.

This year, though, an EF-4 briefly touched down in very far western Love County, damaging 2 houses and a few barns, outbuildings, trees and several power poles, before it proceeded to ravage Lone Grove west of Ardmore.

My dad survived two tornadoes in Texas.....one at his childhood home in Spanish Fort in Montague County and one in Saginaw as he was driving home from work in the 1970s or 1980s. My brother survived the Wichita Falls tornado in 1979 that killed 45 people, and the Fort Worth tornado a couple of years ago came right over his home and lifted a few shingles and tore up some trees but didn't touch down until it was a bit east of him.

At least you're experienced in our kind of weather so the constant storm watches and warnings that seem to be almost a daily occurrence won't drive you nuts. I know you get plenty of "ugly" weather there in Dallas as well.

Dawn