STILLWATER, Okla.—A massive storm system swept the Southeast with high winds that combined with low humidity to spark more than 130 wildfires in 44 Oklahoma counties over the weekend.
Nearly 300 homes were damaged or destroyed statewide, including houses in the college town of Stillwater about 65 miles north of Oklahoma City.
Downed power lines may have started some of the fires that scorched Oklahoma.
Jenny Nelson and her son Chris surveyed the burned wreckage of her home of 15 years. She had seen the smoke from the approaching fires on the night of March 14. When her grown children called, she gathered a few things and evacuated with her neighbors from the Pecan Lake Court cul-de-sac.
She said all she could feel when she saw her destroyed home was sadness. Chris Nelson agreed.
“Loss, loss of memories, generations of memories in this house,” he told The Epoch Times.
Across the street, Ken Hudgeons watched his neighbors picking up the debris that had been their homes.
He said although his house is still standing, many of his windows have shattered from the heat of the fire. Sparks and embers have migrated into the attic, and smoke has permeated the interior, making the two-story brick home uninhabitable.
“I’m not sure how we'll mitigate this whole thing, but the situation is that my wife’s not going to move in here if it smells,” Hudgeons told The Epoch Times.
Hudgeons said he has family and friends who have already reached out to help. He said in the end, he feels blessed that he and his neighbors made it through the inferno alive.
“So we’re going to make sure that everything is like it was before ... that’s why you have insurance,“ Hudgeons said. “And we'll play the insurance game, I guess.”
Next door, Jay Caffey sat next to his swimming pool with his dog, Charlotte. The house Caffey shared with his children has been reduced to ashes and fire-warped appliances. A burned-out car sat in the driveway as Caffey waited for his in-laws to arrive. Like many in his neighborhood who lost most of their worldly possessions, Caffey said things could have been worse.
He said that after 30 years in Stillwater, he has a support network and a vacant apartment on the second floor of his business.
“We’ve got so many friends, we’ve got so many family members,“ Caffey told The Epoch Times. ”We have a place to go.”
Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt said at a March 15 news conference that some 266 square miles have burned so far in his state.
Earlier in the day, Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond issued a warning to anyone who tries to profit from the disaster.
Drummond stated that the Emergency Price Stabilization Act was triggered by Stitt’s emergency declaration for 12 counties.
The law, known as the price gouging statute, prohibits an increase of more than 10 percent in the price of goods and services. The affected counties are Cleveland, Creek, Dewey, Grady, Lincoln, Logan, Oklahoma, Pawnee, Payne, Pottawatomie, Roger Mills, and Stephens.
“Oklahoma consumers reeling from the wildfires can be assured they will be protected from unfair price hikes and fraud,” Drummond stated.
On the afternoon of March 15, more than 10,000 people in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi were without power, down from the 77,000 people reported without power in Oklahoma alone on the night of March 14.
Beginning the morning of March 14, wildfires threatened to spread rapidly amid warm, dry weather and strong winds. Evacuations were ordered in Texas, Kansas, Missouri, New Mexico, and Oklahoma.
A blaze in Roberts County, Texas, northeast of Amarillo, quickly blew up from less than a square mile to an estimated 32.8 square miles, the Texas A&M Forest Service said on social media platform X. Crews stopped its advance by the evening.
About 60 miles to the south, another fire grew to about 3.9 square miles before its advance was halted in the afternoon.
The Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management activated its emergency operations center after several fast-moving fires prompted evacuations of the town of Leedey in the western part of the state and a rural area east of Norman.
Andy James, Oklahoma Forestry Services fire management chief, told KOCO-TV that firefighters had been pre-positioned in certain areas, which helped authorities respond to blazes early. Firefighting aircraft were also deployed in some parts of Oklahoma and Texas but were generally unable to fly because of low visibility from smoke and dust.
On the evening of March 14, the National Weather Service stated that a “complex of extremely dangerous fires” was located northeast of Oklahoma City, near Stillwater. It urged some in the city of about 50,000 people to evacuate. Officials issued mandatory evacuation orders via social media that included homes, hotels, and a Walmart.
Jennifer Thompson, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Norman, Oklahoma, described the fire conditions in the central and northern parts of the state as historic and highly anomalous.
Much of northwest Oklahoma remained under a Red Flag fire warning on March 15.
