Locals Step Up to Help During Texas’ Largest Wildfire Ever in Its Northern Panhandle

A drone view shows firefighters spraying trees with water after the Smokehouse Creek fire © REUTERS/Nathan Frandino

Locals Step Up to Help During Texas’ Largest Wildfire Ever in Its Northern Panhandle

In early March, Texas’ largest wildfire on record blazed across northeastern Texas and western Oklahoma. The blaze, dubbed the Smokehouse Creek Fire, scorched more than one million acres of grassland and timber, destroying homes in small towns that dot the Panhandle region.

Jason Wilhelm, 36, was using a frontloader to clear the lot in Canadian, a town about 100 miles northeast of Amarillo, where the house he shared with his wife and five children had stood a few days earlier. Charred grass and blackened trees were all that remained.

His wife was able to gather pictures, cash, and some sentimental items from the home before the blaze roared through. “It was heartbreaking,” Wilhelm said.

The Smokehouse Creek Fire has burned approximately 1.05 million acres, or nearly 1,700 square miles, an area larger than New York’s Long Island. The blaze replaced a 2006 fire that charred about 900,000 acres—the most expansive in state history.

While Texas is in the midst of its natural fire season—running from January through May—the sheer size of the Smokehouse Creek blaze makes it an outlier, said Flavio Lehner, who teaches atmospheric science at Cornell University. While the fire was caused by a power line pole that had decayed at the base, Lehner also noted that human-driven climate change could be a contributing factor to the fire’s large size.

“It’s warmer than it has been in the past, and that makes the vegetation drier, you add in the lack of rainfall, and that makes the conditions right for fire,” Lehner said.

The fire has led to countless disruptions across the state, including the postponement of classes. After hearing schools would be closed, 15-year-old Nathan Slater knew he wanted to help. He joined the wildfire response with the Hoover Volunteer Fire Department, where he had been training and volunteering for the last couple of months.

“It was my first fire to go onto. I was excited and nervous at the same time,” Slater told ABC News.

Arriving at the station, Slater wasn’t the only teen who had volunteered to help. The nine junior firefighters who had been volunteering with the fire department were deployed and paired with an experienced firefighter, and they began their work around town. The teens ranged from ages 14 to 17 and were responsible for things like providing water and supplies to other firefighters in the field to hosing down the fires and grass.

While the area where the fire has burned is sparsely populated, it is home to most of the state’s cattle, and officials estimate that more than 7,000 cows have died in the blaze. According to Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller, there are more than 11 million head of cattle across the state, and he estimates that the final loss of cattle in the Panhandle could approach 10,000.

Lee Haygood, 57, the owner of a ranch about 25 miles southeast of Canadian, managed to save all his cattle. While he was counting his blessings, he was also wondering how he would feed them.

“We didn’t lose any cattle, but we lost 75 percent of our grassland,” he said. “It’ll take a full growing season to come back, not until maybe the fall.”

For families who’ve lost their homes in the blaze, they are trying to remain positive. “You don’t want to believe it’ll be your house that burns,” Ronnie Johnson told CNN. “We’ve seen others so we’ll rebuild and start again.”

(Source: Reuters)