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Texas Agriculture Archive

April 7, 2006

Steve Rader looks at the devastation caused by March wildfires on Jeff Haley's ranch, located north of McLean in the eastern Texas Panhandle. Initially, estimates of cattle losses ranged up to 10,000 head. More recent estimates put the number around 5,000.

Mother Nature plays her hand in Texas' largest
wildfire disaster. Now it's time to pick up the pieces...

By Bobby Horecka
Field Editor

As day three of the single largest wildfire disaster in Texas history drew to a close, rancher Joe Davidson and his wife weren't taking any chances.

A full moon rose to the east, while the warmth of the sun faded golden purple to the west and a fiery razor grew desperately more ferocious with the falling of night, filling the northern horizon with an angry, hungry presence.

Davidson had seen the towering inferno from earlier that day, swallowing miles of hayfields and ranchland. He had heard stories of neighbors losing everything, from houses and outbuildings to livestock and livelihoods. And while the rugged canyon country of the Red River's Salt Fork offered barrier to the burning, the thought of flames leaping the banks and catching them asleep seemed all too real.

"You can't be too careful," he said, eyes darting to the north. "Especially with everything we've seen on the news."

The numbers only multiplied as the news reels rolled—hundreds of thousands of acres were scorched in the drought-plagued eastern Texas Panhandle and scores of livestock lay dead in their wake, not to mention a climbing human death toll that ultimately ended with 11 lives lost as they tried to escape.

The fire to the north creeping ever closer, the Davidsons figured it was time to go.

"We've got a place in Amarillo, so I think we'll stay there for the night," he said.

"You probably ought to be getting on yourself," his wife added, urging this reporter to point his headlamps down the road.

•••

Driving to an area devastated by wildfires, you expect to see miles of charred country. But what really catches your attention is when those miles of blackened ruin turn to white sands blowing in the breeze, stirring up dust clouds through smoky haze.

I personally have never been to the Mojave Desert, but I imagine it comparable.

Nothing remained but a few smoking nubs of yucca and mesquite. All else was sand as far as the eye could see. Not even a hint remained of the thigh-high native pasturelands of mere hours before.

It was carried away on the wind, which flecked my eyes at a steady 30 mph and stole away my ball cap on more than one occasion.

But it wasn't really windy that day.

By most everyone's account, it's not considered a windy day in this part of Texas until you have to fight a few 60-70 mph gusts, the type that fueled the firestorm's fury across this desolate landscape two days prior.

The fire began on a Sunday, borne of arching power lines or a tossed cigarette—no one really knows for certain.

By Tuesday, more than a half million acres had burned in places even a Native Texan had difficulty finding on a map—places like Alanreed, Lefors and Skellytown, which combined probably hold fewer people than a modest-sized apartment complex.

Fence lines and power lines lie in tangled ruins along miles of roadways, leaving surviving livestock to their own devices and hundreds of families in this scantly populated region without the benefit of electricity.

Imported line crews from Oklahoma Gas & Power worked to right the downed lines and missing power poles. A few still burned from the ground up, leaving cross beams dangling and stretching the few still erect lines to their snapping points.

Still, the work seemed somewhat futile. Another smoke plume rose on the horizon a few miles away, leading some of the workers to speculate that what they fixed the day before would no doubt be in ashes again.

Not from the area, I pressed on hoping to find some semblance of what this expanse of land should look like. I drove for nearly an hour before I found the burn line. It was as if some mammoth eraser had swiped away a thousand miles.

It seemed impossible, but was all too real.

•••

"It looks like a bomb went off," said Steve Rader, one of many cowboys and neighbors who gathered on a Tuesday at Jeff Haley's ranch near Lefors for the round up.

Rader and his son Justin were from Canadian to the east, just outside of the 1,000-square-mile area of charred wasteland left by the fires. We met at the Haley Ranch headquarters, where wives manned the phones and prepared meals beside the mechanical roar of the gas generator, set up outside of their tin-roofed adobe home.

Somehow the house and barn—another tin-topped masonry structure—survived the blaze unscathed. The lawn and eave-drop shrubs weren't so fortunate. Nor were 12,000 of Haley's 15,000 acres of ranchland.

"We heard Gentleman Jeff had some trouble up here, so we thought we'd come by to see if he needed any help," Steve Rader said.

All morning long they trekked the desert landscape on horseback, coaxing wild-eyed heifers and their calves from ravines and hillsides with armfuls of hay and range cubes. By noon, they had collected a few dozen, which now stood in heavy pipe pens sounding mournful cries to the many scorched souls who wouldn't be joining them.

Rader and his son bounced along in their dually flatbed past the boiled out stock ponds and tempered metal windmills of Haley's place, stopping now and again when they spotted a stray cow or calf left behind by the morning round up.

They tossed a few chugs of hay and made mental notes of the location so they might return later for a second gathering, should the poor beasts survive that long. Many of the survivors stumbled on cooked hooves—flesh burned and eyes seared—not even aware of the Raders' kind gesture.

Topping the next hill, the slow draw of an expansive valley came into view where a bulldozer was hard at work hauling charred and bloated carcasses to their final resting place. Dotting the landscape from horizon to horizon were the remains of others, all shapes and sizes, laying in twisted anguish as if burned alive by some cruel child with an enormous magnifying glass.

Scattered between the bodies like gruesome seashells in the sand were the hard outer shells of cattle hooves, which as Steve Rader explained, had popped off the cooking cattle feet as they scrambled for safety.

Casualty counts varied depending on who did the ciphering that day, but all of the figures topped a hundred head mark in that one valley alone, a single ranch's contribution to the estimated 4,300 animals left dead by the fire.

Texas Animal Health Commission originally estimated livestock losses at 10,000 head, a number which climbed to more than 25,000 during the initial reporting of the event by the media. Those numbers slowly backed down as cattlemen and state officials called in the grizzly accounts of the many mass graves.

Steve Rader, a lifelong ran-cher who had witnessed a capable prairie fire or two growing up, seemed like a fellow of typically few words. But as he stared across the valley of death, hands stuffed deep inside jacket pockets, those few words seemed to catch in his throat as he spoke.

"Never in my life have I ever seen anything like this," he said, drifting off into an eerie silence.

•••

"I don't know how they do it in other parts, but we take care of our own," said Collingsworth County Judge John James, one of many leaders outside the primary burn area who offered up emergency shelters after the fire.

"We've had a lot of people really step up to the plate to help those in need."

For some, that meant climbing on horseback and driving cattle. For others, that meant fighting the fire lines, some for in excess of 36 hours at a time. And for others, it came in as small a gesture as delivering a batch of cookies or a few bottles of water to those who needed it more than they did.

Texas Farm Bureau State Director Billy Bob Brown agreed.

Ranching and residing in the northern Panhandle, he was among the first to provide first-hand accounts of the destruction.

But widespread destruction wasn't all he saw.

"It is amazing how folks pull together," he said. "Not one person has complained or told me how bad they have it. All have found something to be positive about. I haven't heard one `when is somebody coming to help me,' but I've heard a lot of `what can I do to help?'"

Brown said he saw one of the Gray County Farm Bureau members stop by the office in Pampa the day before with a check to buy diesel for those bringing in hay.

"He was sorry he didn't have any hay to spare," he recalled.

Although suffering through his own share of fire damages, he wasn't hurt as much as some of his neighbors, Brown said.

"Makes you proud and humble to live around people like this," Brown said. "They will make sure the job gets done."

•••

Although "Gentleman Jeff" no doubt lost a lot, he and his family were fortunate enough to be on the road when the worst of the wildfires plowed through his property.

They were in Houston, showing prize winners at the livestock show.

His ranch foreman, Jerry Swires, reached him by cell phone to report the news. By the time Haley turned the corner into his gate, he said he hardly recognized the place.

Swires spent Tuesday on horseback, never sharing his eye-witness account to those left back at headquarters. But he didn't need to. A beat up old Nissan pickup parked near the barn spoke volumes.

Lauren Haley, wife of Jeff Haley's brother and ranching partner Jim Haley, explained:

"He (Swires) saw the smoke coming up on the hill over there," she said, pointing to the rise beyond the barn. "Then he jumped into the truck and drove out to the pens."

In preparation for an upcoming sale, the Haleys had caught a few yearling bulls. Now Swires was speeding to the gate in hopes he might set them free ahead of the flames.

"He did everything he could, but it just came too fast," Mrs. Haley said, telling his story to a group of other ladies at the ranch that day. "The fire just jumped up and burned them before he could do anything. Before he knew it, the flames had surrounded him as well."

Swires dove into his pickup and pointed it to the ranch house, flooring the gas as he plowed through the walls of fire now separating the two. He made it to the barn, where he stopped and ran to house, cranking on a garden hose to douse what little he could before the power outage killed his water pump.

A day later, the truck was little more than a shell of itself, paintless and blistered.

"Jerry's got some burns on his face, but other than that he's ornery as ever. He'll probably want a raise now," mused Gentleman Jeff, who despite losing so much had definitely kept his humor.

"All we can do is laugh about it," he said. "Crying wouldn't do much good, and this is too depressing not to poke at least a little fun at it."

Yet despite the banter between cow hands that day, a distant hollow look in everyone's eyes told another, darker tale.

•••

The National Weather Service (NWS) clocked wind speeds at some of the highest ever for that part of the country on March 12, the day the fires began.

Gusts topped out at 72 mph and humidity readings were nonexistent, producing what NWS forecasters called "the perfect storm" when it came to wildfire conditions.

So when fireman Joe Millican, chief of the Hoover Volunteer Fire Department in Gray County, got the call at 9:36 a.m. Sunday, he and his crews expected the worst.

The first fire ignited most of the southern part of the county, and within a few hours, the Hoover volunteers were called to another blaze in the county's northernmost reaches. The northern fire consumed 450,000 acres in a single day's time, making it the largest on record in Texas history. The southern fire blazed through 355,000 acres, the second largest in state history.

By the end of the week, more than 700 firemen from around the country joined forces in what was later dubbed the largest single firefighting mobilization ever, Texas Forest Service officials said.

"We actually saw tornadoes of fire shooting up fire debris 150 feet ahead of the main fireline, which in some places was more than 25 miles across," Millican said. "We had to forget the flames at that point and focus our energy on saving what we could."

His crews clocked the fires at burning one square mile every two minutes as they raced to get ahead of it.

To their credit, Millican said the men under his command managed to finish the week with no losses of homes, no firemen injuries and no loss of life. Other fire battalions weren't so lucky. More than three dozen firefighters suffered injuries—some critically—about 20 houses burned and 11 people died in fire-related accidents.

"It was so fast, all you could do is save yourself," said Lane Thompson, a McLean area cattleman who lost more than 11,000 of his 12,000-acre ranch. All totaled, he estimated his livestock losses at more than 500 head.

"We did what we could to cut fences and set livestock free, but you can only do so much," he said. "Some of the cattle made it two or three miles, but they can only run so far."

And with estimates of about 60 miles of fence line down and no pastures to speak of, the recovery process will no doubt be a long one, Thompson said.

As winds did their part to relocate his real estate, Gentleman Jeff probably said it best:

"I bet this is the only time you'll hear a bunch of ranchers praying for a three-foot snow."

•••

"If you come back here in five years, I bet you won't even be able to tell this took place," said Justin Rader, who in addition to helping his father on their ranch near Canadian is also a Crop Sciences major at Oklahoma State.

Extension beef cattle specialist Ted McCollum and wildlife specialist Ken Cleary agreed.

Vegetation may appear to have been destroyed by the wildfire, they said. This loss not only affects the availability of feed for livestock, but also feed, cover and nesting habitat for wildlife.

The fire also removed litter and standing vegetation that protected the soil from rain erosion and slowed wind and runoff, Cearley said. However, with few exceptions, the plants in the rangeland community are still alive and will recover.

That is, if cattle are not put back too early.

Recovery may take a few months to a couple of years, depending on the climate and management of the areas, McCollum said. Management should focus on maintaining and improving plant vigor, rebuilding soil protection, and reestablishing both wildlife habitat and forage base for livestock production, he said.

Already, rains and snowfall have begun the recovery process. And the ranchers, too, are beginning to focus their energies on tomorrow.

As Rader's tour of the Haley ranch came to a close, a lone cow near the entrance gate caught his attention. Unlike many of the others he had seen that day, she seemed surprisingly untouched by the firestorm.

The ritual that followed was almost robotic by then—stop the truck, climb out and grab an armful of feed. But as he rounded the back bumper, his hardened face softened to a smile.

"She's calving," he called out to his son. "Bring her some more feed."

Back at the ranch, Rader reported his find to Haley.

"Well I'll be," he said in reply. "I'll have to keep that one as a replacement heifer—Lord knows I could use them right now."

He paused a moment.

"I'll call her Fuego. Or maybe Torch."

"But she's definitely a keeper," he said. "Her momma's a survivor."

Not unlike the people who weathered Texas' worst firestorm or their ancestors, who helped populate a land as rugged as they were.

"It may take us another 50 years of work before we can retire, but it'll come back," Lane Thompson said. "But all you can do is keep going. If you let it get you down, you'd be done."

Line crews from Oklahoma Power & Gas work to restore downed power lines and missing power poles.

Dozers bury the cattle that couldn't escape the fire that was driven by 60 to 70 mile an hour wind gusts.

The raging fire left scorched earth and a barren landscape over nearly 1 million acres in the eastern Panhandle.

Cowboys drive surviving cattle to safety over a landscape devoured by fire. Powertul winds had blown the ashes away, leaving only dusty, brown sand.

Fire dances on the horizon despite the valiant efforts of volunteer firemen to contain it.

For surviving cattle there is life-giving hay, donated by generous farmers and ranchers across Texas and across the nation.