Smokehouse Creek Fire: After the Smoke Cleared

As it happened, last week I visited Pampa one week to the day after the historic fires burned across the Texas Panhandle. I lived in Pampa for twenty-five years. It’s where my children grew up. It’s where people I love still live, and a few days spent with friends feeds my soul.

It hurt my heart in places I didn’t know I had, seeing the land, the Big Country, burned from horizon to horizon. I could not know who or what lay in the path of this destructive force that devoured lands and properties. I could not imagine the fear that blanketed the surrounding towns, towns I know by name, towns familiar because Panhandle people know someone who lives there.

People feel so small fighting against nature’s forces.

The wind blows where it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going.

John 3:8

The wind. That’s what makes fire so dangerous and destructive. The wind blew ferociously the day the fires started, dancing and changing directions, skipping across highways, unpredictable and devastating.

Before the fire doubled in size, news reports described the area burned as big as the entire city of Dallas. Then Houston. More square miles than the five biggest Colorado fires combined.

Big, bigger, biggest.

Imagine fighting to save this property, the house and barns, and the livestock, when surrounded by flames and while breathing smoke.

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The Texas Panhandle is a place where no man is an island, for neighbors near and far come to the aid of those in need.

Truckloads of hay arrived for cattle stranded on islands of brown grass, islands surrounded by charcoaled dirt. Lives and livelihood at stake. Ranchers spared amidst the flames are the first to help.

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The Big Country

Short movie ^[1] I pieced together in iMovie from videos shot with my iPhone on Highway 70 north of Pampa. Last picture, my friend stopped her car so I could take a still shot. No houses. No power lines. No creatures. The vastness of the scene heightened all sense of proportion. I felt very small, in awe of the land, imagining the people who settled this area less than 150 years ago.

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After the smoke clears and raging fires put out, damage assessment begins. Many of those who evacuated were terrified. Was it worse for those who could not evacuate to safety? The town of Canadian was surrounded on all sides by fires. Highways were closed.

Traumatic experiences need healing. Wounds treated. Losses calculated.

Stories will unfold over time. But I can testify that people in the Texas Panhandle are resilient. They will rebuild, restore, grieve losses and go on.

The earliest pioneers paved the way for the people who now live in a part of the world that’s more like an ocean and unlike the densely populated cities across America. In a land too enormous to describe, cattle ranches and farms will continue to dot the prairies of this big country.

Here’s an article about Smoke signals, describing how firefighters identify fires by their smoke.

[1] Four pictures copied from Social Media as news of the fires spread appear near the end of video.

Music added is from the movie The Big Country, which came to mind as I surveyed the scene where mile after mile the fire had blazed. Copyright owner permits use with videos.