Wildfires raging across four states, fanned by winds and fueled by a drought-starved prairie, have killed at least six people and burned more than 2,300 square miles.
Winds in western Kansas and the Oklahoma Panhandle were easing somewhat on Wednesday, but weather officials said
that conditions were challenging for fire crews and were expected to
worsen on Thursday and Friday, renewing concerns about getting the fires
under control.
“These
conditions will make it somewhat easier for firefighting efforts, but
far from perfect,” Bill Bunting, forecast operations chief for the
Oklahoma-based Storm Prediction Center, told The Associated Press. “The
fires still will be moving.”
“The ideal situation is that it would turn cold and rain,” he said, “and unfortunately, that’s not going to happen.”
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The
National Weather Service has issued a critical fire risk warning from
the Texas Panhandle into Oklahoma, Kansas and western Missouri.
Phillip
Truitt, a specialist with the Texas A&M Forest Service, told
Reuters that because of the high-risk days ahead, “we’re trying to get
these fires buttoned up as fast as we can.”
It
was not clear what started the fires, but Mr. Bunting said human
activity — such as a cigarette thrown from a car or a spark from a
catalytic converter — was most often the culprit. Lightning accounts for
25 percent of wildfires.
Among
the dead are three ranch hands in the Texas Panhandle who were trying
to herd cattle away from the flames. Judge Richard Peet, the top
administrator of Gray County, Tex., told local news outlets that three
people — two men and a woman — had been killed by a wildfire that flared
Monday afternoon.
The Amarillo Globe-News published profiles of the victims on Wednesday.
One
man, Cody Crockett, 20, was on horseback; his girlfriend, Sydney
Wallace, 23, was nearby on foot, Judge Peet told reporters. Ms. Wallace,
he said, was unable to escape the fumes and died of smoke inhalation.
Mr. Crockett and the third victim, Sloan Everett, 35, who was also on horseback, suffered burns, Judge Peet said.
Nearly
six million people live in areas at risk for critical wildfire
conditions, including Tulsa, Okla., Oklahoma City and Kansas City, the
Storm Prediction Center said. Forecasters said conditions were also ripe
for fires in Iowa, Missouri and Nebraska.
Kansas
officials said that in addition to the homes and buildings destroyed,
the fires had killed an unknown number of livestock in several counties.
Many animals maimed by the fire had to be killed. Larry Konrade of Ashland, Kan., told The Wichita Beacon that he had killed at least 40 cows, “and in a lot of places, there weren’t even very many left alive to put down.”
“All
in all, I’d guess I seen between 300 and 400 dead cattle,” said Mr.
Konrade, who spent the day helping a rancher. “It was just a matter of
putting animals out of their misery, doing them a favor. They were going
to die anyway.”
The
extent of the damage in some areas was not known, The Hutchinson News
in Kansas reported, because officials have been unable to survey the
area.
In Kansas, at least nine helicopters have been put into service to fight the fires.
A
dashcam video of a Kansas state trooper captured him rescuing a
stranded truck driver and then driving through thick smoke and fire.
The trooper, Tod Hileman, posted a video on Facebook
of the fire near Wilson, in central Kansas. After the fire jumped
across part of Interstate 70, he said, he began turning people around
before they drove into it. He said he waved off about 20 cars and two
tractor-trailers before the fire crossed the opposite lanes.
He can be heard on the video telling a truck driver who became stuck to “get in.”
Oklahoma’s
governor, Mary Fallin, declared a state of emergency on Tuesday in 22
counties because of the wildfires, and Gov. Sam Brownback of Kansas has
signed a state of disaster emergency declaration.
In
northeastern Colorado, near the Nebraska border, firefighters battled a
blaze that had burned more than 45 square miles and destroyed at least
five homes and 15 outbuildings, with no serious injuries.
Officials
in the states affected by the wildfires have not released estimates of
the economic losses caused by damaged or destroyed homes, businesses and
livestock — or the expense of firefighters’ efforts to put out the
flames. But it is expected that those costs will run well into the
millions of dollars.
During last year’s massive wildfire along the Kansas-Oklahoma border,
firefighting costs reached $1.5 million in Barber County, Kan., which
was hardest hit. The county’s emergency management chief, Jerry McNamar,
told The A.P. that the economic losses included 750 to 800 cattle that
died, along with at least 2,700 miles of fence, worth $27 million, that
was destroyed.
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