The Title: Governor Kevin Stitt’s Ranch Is Among Oklahoma Wildfires’ Victims
The Text: TULSA, Okla. — The lightning-sparked wildfires that have consumed more than 118,000 acres across Oklahoma for the past month are a catastrophic Midwest natural disaster, devastating Native American communities and wildlife, and destroying the homes and memories of many Oklahomans, including one of the state’s most prominent families.
Gov. Kevin Stitt and his wife, Sarah, are among those whose possessions have been claimed. News of the Stitt family’s ranch in Osage County being “40 percent destroyed” came on Tuesday as Oklahoma’s governor traveled for a meeting with President Biden in Washington.
Explosive winds, as well as flame-strengthening fuelbeds, have made the fires spread so quickly that the Olivet Baptist Church Camp in Token, where 200 to 300 people had gathered to fight a nearby wooded acreage Monday, was soon surrounded by ingenuity. By Tuesday, the community gathering space and dwelling had been overwhelmed by flames, and some people retreated to their vehicles to seek an escape route.
In all, the wildfires have blackened nearly 100,000 additional acres in Kansas and Texas. No lives have been claimed, but five injuries and an estimated $78 million in damages have been reported, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. More than 1,000 people have been evacuated, and one of the state’s most cherished bison herds, living on the reservation in southeastern Oklahoma, had been forced to abandon its habitat.
Wildfires typically occur in Oklahoma each spring, but the state’s early March onset would have been containable within more typical parameters, according to Mike Anderson, chief of resource management, prevention, and information for the Oklahoma Forest Service. Heavy winds caused many of the early ignitions, but the fuel source that has stoked the flames, in Anderson’s experience, is more unusual.
“We’ve got sycamore leaves, an abundance of them out there that haven’t fallen to the ground yet, and they’re super flammable,” he said.
Sycamore, or American plane, is a common tree in the southeastern United States, but Osage County is not “part and parcel” of the species’ normal range, Anderson said. Drought conditions across the region have also left more bone-dry dead tree limbs available for ignition.
The Stitts’ ranch, on Tipton Road near Skiatook Lake, is among hundreds of properties damaged or destroyed by the wildfires. In Broken Arrow, near Tulsa, 77-year-old Don McGovern and his wife, Donna, fled their home with a flashlight, their dog, and memories of a lifetime spent collecting antiques. Don McGovern, who used to be an Oklahoma Highway Patrol captain, attempted to stay in his house when the Wednesday afternoon wildfire reached Rowda Road, but was soon surrounded by wall-to-wall flames.
“Mother Nature is pretty darn determined to do what it wants to do,” Don McGovern said. “And there’s nothing you can do about it.”
The family is insured for about $156,000, but almost all of its antiques collection, totaling $500,000, is lost, broken, or still buried beneath the rubble of the family’s former home. The family’s former farm hand, a goat and a pup named Dottie, also did not survive, and some of the antiques were not even identifiable as objects of cultural significance, Don McGovern said.
The Broken Arrow couple’s loss is seemingly ubiquitous. On Sunday, fire crews reached the remnants of Warren and Mary Peña’s land in Kay County, where their home once stood — reduced to three walls and debris in the middle of the road. They fled with only a cellphone and a photo album of their eight grandchildren, the sweet but poignant latter left behind for the firefighters.
The Penas will be sleeping in a Red Cross shelter for the rest of the week, unable to return to a home so badly damaged that the natural gas has been left on for safety, fearing more looming flames.
Even with the air conditioning on, the couple is “freezing to death” in their current shelter’s 54-degree temperatures, alongside more than 100 other people, said Warren Peña, a 59-year-old steel-wool worker who spent his final moments gathering as many of the family’s irreplaceable possessions as he felt his body could carry.
The tension has raised something of a specter for Warren Peña: how to rebuild after such an unexpected loss.
“You get knocked down and you have to get back up,” he said. “That’s life.”
Tag: Oklahoma Wildfires Governor Kevin Stitt Ranch
Tag: Sycamore leaves accelerating wildfire spread in Oklahoma.
Tag: Broken Arrow family loses antiques collection worth half a million dollars in wildfire.
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