Dawn, It is AWFULL! I can't believe how big this fire is. I have several friends east of there... and am hoping all are going to be ok, and that they won't loose their houses.

Moni

Moni,

Oh I hope your friends and their property are alright. Have you been able to get a phone call through to them?

I looked at photos on one of the news websites and it looks simply awful.

A couple of our forum members here live in/near this area and hope they check in whenever they can to let us know how they're doing.

The rest of the week we will have similar fire weather conditions. As long as the drought continues, so will the fires. It is looking like a rough year in Oklahoma in 2011.

Dawn

We have friends that were pretty close to the fire but they think they'll be safe now.

A childhood, but still close dear friend of mine was on her way to the Methodist church this evening to help with the evacuees. Her son is a full time fire fighter and her DH is volunteer. So far, they are all safe...waiting to hear. This is awful, reminds me of the fire that Seedmama experienced just about a month ago.

So...where are those that were praying for all the snow that we received??? They need to get to work on praying for the rain!!!!

Thank you Dana for letting me know. I'm in Chicago right now on business and didn't know this was happening. No one seems to be answering their phones, but I'm trying to get through.

Robert

Paula,

We don't get much OKC news down here. Does this mean folks are still in evac centers tonight and not back home?

Robert,

Glad to hear you're OK and I hope that your home is as well. I couldn't tell from the names of the roadways on the evac notice if it was near you or not, but I knew it was in your general area.

This is a simply horrid week in OK for fires and will be all week. Until rain falls, we're all in danger, except NE OK where it is raining fairly regularly.

Please let us know when you find out if your home and neighborhood are all right.

Dawn

Apparently most of it was several miles east of Lake Aluma and northwest of Spencer. In Forest Park we have several tornado sirens they would have let off if there was any danger nearby.

The wooded thickets around here are incredibly dry and dangerous now....I fear fire storms like they had over in MWC and Purcell a few years back.

That's why I was worried about you. I kept thinking of all your grand and majestic trees and about how dry they are in that part of the state. We had fire here similar to what you saw in MWC and Purcell in the droughts of 2005-2006 and 2008-2009.

At some fires in Love County in 2008-2009, the emergency personnel at the scene of some large fires described the large, wind-driven fire as "rolling over the tops of the trees". It was an incredible and terrifying sight and I thought it was a very accurate description.

In 2005-2006, it was so dry here in our county that even the underground tree roots and humus in the soil burned, and sometimes they burned for days. The highest Keetch-Byram Drought Index I remember in 2008-09 was a little under 700 and I think we were only in Extreme Drought. In 2005-06, I think it was higher and we were in Exceptional drought but I don't remember the highest KBDI. In much of central Oklahoma, the Keetch-Byram Drought Index is rapidly approaching the 600s and the kinds of underground burning we had in 2005-2006 usually occurs once the KBDI is in the 600-800 range. Wind, however, can change the equation considerably. I've seen really bad wind-driven fires even with relative moderate KBDIs. We've lost homes to wind-driven wildfires when the KBDI was in the lower 500s, and we likely could have stopped those fires from reaching the homes in that kind of drought had the wind not been so persistently strong.

Sunday is looking especially dangerous at this point in time, but it is still a few days out and the forecasts this far in advance are still kind of 'iffy'. I'm hoping they change for the better before Sunday gets here.

You are welcome Rob. I'm sorry for the brevity of the message. I expected you were okay, given that the bamboo grove on fire would surely have caught the attention of television helicopter crews.

You'll be sad to know that I lost very little of my bamboo in the fires three weeks ago, and will not be needing replacements. I did, however, add to my repertoire of sailor talk, as I listened to helpful neighbors talk about how hard it was to extinguish.

Has someone developed an app that will notify one if a fire is nearby? I'd buy it. You are a computer guy, right?

Seedmama & others....

The bamboo will always be here for you....

I finally got back from New York City & Chicago tonight and was relieved to see Forest Park is still a forest. It's still winter in NYC and Chicago. Manhattan will always be breath-taking with its high rises and monuments to human ingenuity, but it also is so very sad how people have their drooping and diseased potted plants on display at the gas stations, the doorsteps of the terraced housing developments, and on the frigid windswept balconies of their million-dollar one-bedroom apartments.

I'll take the firestorms, tornadoes, floods and droughts and insect infestations of vegetable gardens in Oklahoma over that any day of the week...

And again, thanks for alerting me to the fires.

Seedmama, Check with your city's or county's Emergency Management Director. A lot of them have some sort of automatic notification system. Ours sends text messages to your phone. There also is a Scanner App available for smartphones. The one Tim uses lets him listen to OKC emergency radio traffic. Get the scanner application at the app store and then choose your state and then look for OKC and customize it from there. You can listen in to radio traffic when fire is in your area but I dont know of any notification system for citizens except those available, if any, through your area's Emergency Management office.

Robert,

You make living in Oklahoma sound so attractive. lol You forgot to mention our ice storms in winter and searing heat in summer, not to mention the flash flooding experienced whenever rain finally decides to fall.

Dawn