Dozens of fires across Oklahoma have destroyed nearly 300 structures and burned close to 200,000 acres, Gov. Kevin Stitt said Saturday morning, as dangerous fire conditions persisted from Texas to Nebraska.
The fires were fueled by low humidity, dry vegetation and hurricane-force winds that threatened areas from the Texas Panhandle all the way to Iowa. On Saturday morning, Oklahomans were still assessing the damage, but videos on social media showed houses consumed by flames in parts of Stillwater, Okla., a university town of about 50,000 people.
Governor Stitt said the fires had destroyed at least 293 structures and led to the death of one person in a vehicle. Some fires were still smoldering on Saturday morning, officials said.
Governor Stitt declared a state of emergency for 12 counties on Saturday.
More than 150 wildfires were burning in the early morning hours of Saturday in Oklahoma alone, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
So many fires had erupted around the state that the usual system of mutual aid hadn’t been available Friday night, said Clay Abercrombie, the mayor of Mannford, Okla.
“So it was kind of, to each his own,” Mr. Abercrombie said.
Mark Goeller, director of Oklahoma Forestry Services, called the disaster “historic.” In 40 years with the agency, he said, he had “never seen anything as bad as what we saw yesterday.”
For the governor, the loss was personal: He lost a farmhouse near Luther, not far from Oklahoma City, the state capital.
Fierce winds on Friday grounded aerial firefighting tools, including the “super scooper” planes that can drop thousands of gallons of water onto a blaze. On Saturday, they were preparing to fly, said Keith Merckx, a spokesman for the Oklahoma Forestry Services. It may take days to assess the damage, he added.
Emergency crews in both Oklahoma and Texas were scrambling to keep up with all the blazes popping up across the map.
The largest fire, the 840 Road fire in western Oklahoma near the Texas border, had burned 95,000 acres as of Saturday morning and was 0 percent contained, according to FEMA.
The service warned that while Saturday’s conditions were better, a red flag warning remained in effect in parts of the Panhandle and western Oklahoma.
“New wildfire activity will continue to occur compounded by a tremendous workload containing the active fires,” the service wrote in a Saturday morning update.
Phillip Ware, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service office in Norman, Okla., said that gusts of up to 80 miles per hour in some places roared across plains where grass and shrubs have not yet begun to grow and turn green.
“A lot of the vegetation is still dormant, which makes it very susceptible to fire,” he said.
Stillwater, around 45 miles north of Oklahoma City, issued a mandatory evacuation order Friday night for a zone that covered several square miles. There were active blazes in that area, including structural fires, the Stillwater Emergency Management Agency said on Facebook. It did not elaborate on what kind of structures.
Stillwater is home to Oklahoma State University, which canceled the baseball, softball and tennis events that had been scheduled for Saturday. Early Saturday morning, mandatory evacuation orders were lifted in parts of the city, allowing some residents to return home.
A strong storm driving gusty winds and dry air across a parched landscape was fueling dangerous fire conditions across a wide swath of the country, from eastern New Mexico and Colorado to parts of the Midwest. Forecasters warned that more outbreaks appeared likely over the weekend.
In Camden County, Mo., in the center of the state, officials said a fire had destroyed about 30 structures, with damage assessments ongoing.
The authorities were urging people to stay off the roads as clouds of thick, red dirt and even thicker clouds of billowing dust severely limited visibility.
Martín Gomez, 28, a truck driver, was forced to pull over at a truck stop in Canyon, Texas, because of the danger, he said. “My family really doesn’t want me to travel in this,” he said, “but I have to make this delivery.”
In the region around Lubbock and Amarillo in Texas, Highway Patrol officials reported more than three dozen car crashes. Preliminary reports showed that at least four people had died in crashes around Amarillo, according to Sgt. Cindy Barkley with the Texas Department of Public Safety.
Images on social media showed a dystopian view of the area. Emergency workers were confronting a heavy dust storm as they went car by car looking for anyone trapped inside. A man making one of the videos could be heard saying, “You want to go to Mars? This is Mars.”
Roughly 38,000 customers were without power across northern Texas and parts of Oklahoma on Saturday morning, according to poweroutage.us. The authorities warned that rolling blackouts were a possibility to prevent fires caused by downed power lines.
Angela Morland, the owner of Cactus Inn & RV Parking in McLean, Texas, a motel built in the 1950s, said in a phone interview that she had been ordered to evacuate with her guests on Friday afternoon. She was staying in the basement of a Methodist church about 20 miles away. Many people had gotten rooms at her motel to seek refuge from the highway winds.
“Go east,” Ms. Morland, 57, said she told her guests when she learned they had to leave.
Ms. Morland said she could smell the fire when she packed into her vehicle with her dog, a Rhodesian Ridgeback named Stella, and a stranger. She said about 50 other evacuees were staying with her in the church basement.
“I was frightened,” she said.
Alanreed, another small community in Gray County, about 60 miles east of Amarillo, was also advised to evacuate on Friday because of the threat of fire, said Dustin Miller, an emergency management spokesman for the city of Pampa, the county seat. He said that wind gusts in the area had reached 101 miles per hour, diminishing visibility and making travel treacherous.
“It’s dying down slowly, but not enough,” Mr. Miller said.
He said there were no injuries or property damage reported as of Friday afternoon in the county. But at least two semi-trucks had flipped over on Interstate 40.
Officials had been anticipating the fierce storms. On Thursday, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas directed the Division of Emergency Management to deploy all necessary resources to the affected areas ahead of the wildfires.
The Panhandle, a sparsely populated area, is no stranger to fire disasters. A year ago, downed power lines ignited a wildfire known as the Smokehouse Creek fire, which burned more than a million acres, consuming houses, scorching vast ranch lands and killing livestock. It was the largest blaze on record in Texas.
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