Real Texas Wildfires

Wind advisories in Texas

Our weather alerts out here generally advise us of extreme fire hazards due to high winds.  And when it has not rained in a considerable bit of time, the threat of wildfires, or grass fires is always somewhere in the back of our minds.  And it was in the backs of our minds on Sunday.  The wind had started picking up some out here in Real Texas and it was hitting about 35 mph when Ramona said she smelled fire.

I have come to trust her nose and sometimes I swear she can smell as good as my hound dog ‘Bowie’.  Bowie can run nearly full blast with his nose to the ground smelling where some wayward animal has traveled in his yard.  It was about two o’clock in the afternoon when we had finished with a few chores outside and had just sat down with a quick dinner when her nose picked up the scent of a grass fire.

I immediately placed my bowl of taco salad in the fridge and went and changed back into my work clothes.  We looked out our front door and saw the smoke billowing up and heading our way, being pushed directly towards us by a 35 mph wind.  I had seen how fast a grass and brush fire can travel from my days as a weekly newspaper editor and I knew we were in for a direct hit.

Ramona got on the phone and started the process of contacting our local volunteer fire department.  More on those volunteers here later.  I headed outside and set off my sprinkler system to get the yard wet.  It normally does not come on until 3:00 a.m. in the morning.  I additionally strung out over 100 feet of hose and set 3 sprinklers to work just outside the fence as a first line of defense.  The smoke was getting really dense and still headed directly for us.

As in most grass and brush fires, the smoke is pushed ahead of the actual fire which can be anywhere from 10 to 30 feet high fed by dry grass, broomweed, and general brush that is as ready to burn as gasoline.  By this time, the smoke is severely burning my eyes as I move about outside getting everything in place and making sure water that is pumped from the spring fed creek behind my house is at its highest pressure available.

As the fire hits the road that runs in front of my house, I feel the intense heat wave it generates.  I douse myself with my water hose and hold my ground.  Ramona has done all she can do in contacting volunteer fire departments and she is taking photos and video of all the events unfolding  from her second story front porch overlooking the burning pasture approaching us. To see videos of the fire:  https://www.facebook.com/video/?id=791424221 Pictures:  https://www.facebook.com/album.php?id=791424221&aid=288563

My goal was to keep the hot embers from touching off the grass and dead leaves in my front yard, a difficult task with the high West Texas winds pushing the firestorm.  A wall of fire hit the paved road and I moved the spray pattern of my hose to a fan as I had seen many volunteer firefighters do in the past.  It helped to block the intense heat of the fire.  However, despite all the preparations, the fire jumped the road and started to burn an area on my side of the road.  I moved over to that area and got water on the area quickly and stopped that part of the advance.  The wind then pushed the fire to the very edge of my fence line and jumped on over into my neighbor’s pasture.  Ramona was filming most of the events and even has video of the fire at the road.  I guess she was convinced we could stop the fire at the road.

After a period of time, a volunteer fire department truck from Irion County arrived and made my efforts at fighting the fire look very weak.  We hosed down the area in front of my house and then they wanted to go into my neighbor’s pasture to work the tree line near the road.  The fire was too hot for me to open the gate so a firefighter donned his lighter weight bunker gear and I gave him the combination of the lock.  I grabbed his hose and knocked down part of the fire so he could get to the gate and open it.  More and more trucks from area counties started arriving.  I counted trucks there from Big Lake, North Reagan County, Irion County, Barnhart, Dove Creek, Wall, Christoval, and probably a few more.  It is amazing what local volunteers armed with decent equipment can do to a major grass fire.  I looked up at one truck and the local DPS Trooper was on board manning a hose.

The volunteer firefighters took control of that fire fairly quickly.  A county owned road grader also arrived and started cutting firebreaks through the pasture.  After securing my own property, I got in my golf cart and dragged all the bottled water out of my house and started delivering it to the firefighters.  I had done  that many times as a reporter covering grass fires.  The firefighters are often dehydrated and very fatigued after being in the intense heat and smoke for long periods of time.

The folks out here in Real Texas and in other parts of the state hold our Volunteer Firefighters in very high esteem.  There are just not enough good things we can say about the men and women who leave the comfort of their homes and families and come to the aid of others in all kinds of weather and all times of day or night.  They are not paid, but I know they will receive a reward in Heaven for the work they do here for their fellow man.

As far as grass fires go, the one near my house Sunday was one of the smaller ones I have seen.  On that same day, a grass fire in the Midland area consumed 21,000 acres.  I have seen bigger fires than that sweep across West Texas.  In one day, our local fire department had responded to 7 different fires caused by lightning strikes over a wide area of our part of the world.  That fire consumed many miles of fences, oil wells, tank batteries, cattle, deer, rabbits, and anything else in its path.  I also remember driving through the city of Cross Plains while that area was still burning.  Many homes were burned down to the concrete slabs they were built on.

We were lucky.  It could have gone the other way.  I heard later that 4 ranch homes were lost  in another area on the day of our fire.

Such is life out here in Real Texas.

Tagged as: david werst, Texas wildfires, Texas wind