“The wind was rising and wildly screaming.”
Like this day described in Chapter 22 in Little House on the Prairie, my day, too, began with wind. It ended, as that day did, with fire.
I live on the high plains of western Kansas where it seldom rains. The drier and windier it gets, the bigger the risk of fire. Just before noon yesterday, a fire started about 8 miles northwest of my house. No one knows yet how; my husband’s best guess is that the wind ripped a couple of power lines, and the sparks ignited in the dead grass. In the wind it immediately started to move, threatening two towns — including the one where my kids were in school, 22 miles away — and all the country residences in its path.
The fire burned, but the towns in its path were saved. Courtesy of KSN News.
But I wouldn’t be aware of this until hours later. Around 1 PM, my husband left home, telling me he was going to help put out some “hot spots” near his childhood friend’s house that had been threatened by the fire. In the way that is the custom of a farming community used to dealing with crises, he was understating things a bit — the only reason his friend’s house wasn’t consumed was through the extraordinary effort of volunteers — but I didn’t know this yet.
As the chapter “Pairie Fire” begins, it is, like right now, just spring. Pa is plowing up the dead grass to get at the sod beneath. “The dead grass was so tall and thick that it held up the sod.” Here, too, everything is yellow or brown and burnt. The only green comes from irrigated wheat fields. And the wind, she is blowing.
On this windy day, Pa comes running home with Pet and Patty screaming of fire. He orders buckets of water and wet sacks. Then he gets to plowing a furrow west, south, and east of the house. He has time to plow only one. He sets fire to the grass on the other side of the furrow — a “back fire,” Ma calls it — away from the house. With the big fire advancing from the south, he and Ma beat back the flames approaching the grassless furrow.
That’s how Pa and Ma fended off fire a century ago: water and digging. How do we get prairie fires out today? The same way.
Once someone notices a fire, they get on the phone. To authorities, yes, who will call on their network of volunteer fire fighters. But also to farmers, who may well have already seen the fire and headed out to their tractors. Today we drove around the site of the fire, along miles of dirt roads and some pavement where the fire jumped across. On almost every edge of the burnt rubble were tractor marks where farmers had plowed their fire breaks deep into the dirt.
The water came from fire trucks, much smaller vehicles than you’d see speeding down a city street. They’ve got to be small to drive off-road, over grassland. The water comes not from a hydrant on the sidewalk but from a water tower, usually emblazoned with the name of the town in whose center it sits, or from personal wells.
Click to enlarge. I shot this photo of the back of my husband's friend's house, which was miraculously saved even though fire swept through.
The fire having swept past and gone, Pa and Ma return to the house streaked with smoke and sweat. Just like my husband did last night, and so many other members of our community, and neighboring communities, after they’d spent the day protecting their friends and family from the horror of fire and relentless wind. Without everyone’s help, the casualties of this fire (estimated by news reports at 60 square miles, though that’s debatable), could have been a lot worse. My husband stayed out long after he was out of imminent danger to watch the wind, which could change direction at any second, and to keep an eye out for flare-ups (quite common) in the wake of the departed fire, which could send it back towards our house.
Although some outbuildings, such as barns, were burned, no residences were lost in this fire. No one was seriously injured. But that’s not because of luck. It’s because people fought. Six counties’ worth of volunteer fire departments from two states, local farmers with tractors zig-zagging fortress trenches in the fire’s expected path, and people who simply fought to protect their homes — like my husband’s friend — themselves.