by John Jefferson
“All that was needed to set that grass ablaze was a few sparks from an untended campfire, a passing train engine, a malfunctioning power line, or a cigarette butt thrown out a car window. On an especially windy day, that fire could spiral out of control within minutes.”
And, with a circular wind pattern, a fire could result in what weathercasters call a “firestorm.” They feared it could affect Kansas, Oklahoma, and the Texas Panhandle and Rolling Plains.
That’s what Skip Hollandsworth wrote in 2017 about a weatherman looking at a gathering storm 2,000 miles away. In addition to the quote, I also borrowed his title to one of the most moving articles Texas Monthly magazine has ever published.
The temperature that day was 80-degrees – not nearly as hot as Texas THIS summer. The humidity was quite low, too, and the forecast winds could be dangerously high. Dangerous, particularly, in case of fire. Multiply that risk by our 101-plus – degree forecast for the temperature today in much of Texas as I pen this in late July.
Hollandsworth also quoted John Erickson, author/rancher from his “Hank the Cowdog“ book entitled “The Case of the Blazing Sky,” writing “I guess you know what strong wind does to a fire. In dry weather, it will turn a little fire into a roaring monster . . . a roaring, leaping, hissing monster.”
Erickson had seen prairie fires. He watched one developing in the Texas Panhandle that day in 2017.
On that single March afternoon, at least 32 fires broke out in the southern Great Plains, scorching more than 1.2 million acres, “the largest individual Plains fire outbreak documented in the modern era,” the National Weather Service said. Damage to livestock and structures was in the tens of millions of dollars.
The smoke and fire took a toll of human life. An Oklahoma woman had a fatal heart attack fighting to save their barn. A Kansas trucker lost control in the smoke and died of inhalation.
Hollandsworth described ranch life and several ranching families. He made you know and respect them through his narrative. Three of them, a young cowboy, his beloved wife, and another rancher had been checking on their cattle and thought they were out of danger until the uncontrollable wind changed direction. They raced to reach safety on a hilltop. The two men were found alive, their clothes burned off. They never recovered. The young wife was found dead. The young cowboy lived long enough to thank the responders for coming as they loaded him into the helicopter. Thousands of lives were affected by their passing.
Read the article if you haven’t already. Skip did a masterful job.
Texas is ripe for wildfires this summer. It’s as hot and dry as I can ever remember. A long string of hundred-degree days. And it doesn’t take much to start a tragic fire that can move rapidly through dry tender, especially if pushed by much wind.
Don’t be the one who kindles another firestorm.
JJ
