Oklahoma wildfires leave one dead, many homeless

MANNFORD, Okla. – The fields around Connie Laxton’s home in Oklahoma were black with ash Monday after a roaring wildfire tore across her property and ran right up to her gray, brick ranch home – where it suddenly stopped.

The fire line is marked in the grass a foot from the house, and the smell of smoke permeates the inside. One side of the three 40-foot pear trees in the yard is charred gray and black, the other is leafy and green.

“I went through a tornado in ’84, and it took our house, but we’ve never seen anything like this,” said Laxton, who believes the pear trees deflected sparks that otherwise would have landed on her roof.

Three dozen wildfires have scorched portions of Oklahoma since Friday, leaving only ashes in some spots. Emergency officials said Monday that Cleveland County firefighters recovered a body from a home that had been subject to an evacuation order as a wind-whipped fire roared near Norman on Friday. Emergency managers say dozens of homes are among the 120 structures statewide that burned to the ground.

Tina Frost and her husband, Doug, found the Mickey and Minnie Mouse figurine that topped their wedding cake Monday when they dug through the charred rubble of their home west of Mannford. The discovery was just in time for their 20th wedding anniversary today. They also retrieved quartz crystals from a long ago vacation and china once owned by her great, great-grandmother.

“It was a fire tornado,” Tina Frost said, describing flames that consumed 22 of the 38 homes in her neighborhood. “It came from every direction. There was nothing but fire. I got to be honest. It was pretty scary.”

The Mannford-area fire covered nearly 100 square miles in northern Creek County, about 20 miles west of Tulsa. Fires elsewhere in the state consumed thousands of acres – though in some areas it appeared fires hopscotched across the landscape, damaging one home but not its neighbor, much like a tornado.

Gary McManus, a climatologist with the Oklahoma Climatological Survey, noted with irony that fire conditions were made worse by a warm, wet winter and early spring. Vegetation grew rapidly and then dried in the drought.

“All that green up from the spring, all of that vegetation is just sitting out there as fuel for wildfires,” McManus said.

Lower temperatures – meaning less than 100 degrees – and calmer winds helped firefighters Sunday and Monday, but McManus warned that without significant rain, another outbreak was likely.

“These types of conditions just wait for the right weather pattern,” McManus said.

Authorities said fires were under control or in “mop-up” stages Monday.