McIntosh County escaped the horrific wind and fire damage that devastated several communities in other areas of the state Friday, March 14.

Leslie Phillips, McIntosh County Emergency Management director, reported to county commissioners at their weekly meeting Monday morning that there had been 24 grass fires that burned about 2,100 acres in the county over the weekend.

Most of them were small fires west of Eufaula.

“There was no structural damage, although trees, limbs and wires were down in some areas,” he said.

Inside the city limits of Eufaula, a downed power line in a residential area on the west side of town caused a small fire and the wind caused a power pole south of Braum’s to snap.

In Checotah, wind damaged the gutter around the roof of the McIntosh County Democrat newspaper office, narrowly missing the reporter’s car. LaDonna Rhodes had only moved her vehicle minutes before.

The rest of the state was not so lucky. Winds clocked at between 70 and 80 miles an hour fanned the flames that destroyed thousands of acres.

Four people lost their lives in Friday’s windwhipped fires and some 150 were injured and hundreds of homes destroyed in Mannford, Stillwater and other communities in the north where the damage was the worst.

Statewide there were 77,000 power outages in more than 40 counties.

The fatalities occurred in Lincoln, Garfield, Haskell and Pawnee counties.

Mannford, a community west of Tulsa in Creek County, was among the hardest hit by the fires. Many residents were ordered to evacuate.

Warner Police Chief Ronnie Ross, also chief of the Texanna Volunteer Fire Department, heads the McIntosh County Firefighters Task Force 46. He had intended to send firefighters to Mannford Friday but there were too many fires in this county.

The Task Force is made up of volunteer firefighters with departments throughout the county who frequently join forces to assist other departments in need.

“We were on standby, but never made it. We had our own fires to fight,” said Ross.

Although the Task Force couldn’t go to the Friday fires in Creek County, on Saturday and Sunday members of the Task Force from Texanna, Porum Landing and Shady Grove fire departments helped battle blazes in Carney in Lincoln County, and several other communities, including Luther, Perkins, and Skiatook.

The Eufaula Fire Department was equally busy last week.

“We had four mutual aid calls with the Vivian Fire Department on grass fires between Tuesday, March 11 and Friday, March 14,” said Fire Chief Chad French. “We had a large dumpster fire at Reil Rock on industrial road next to the building. The quick response time saved the building.”

A grass fire that caught a large tree on fire on E Street in Eufaula that was started from power lines arcing from the wind and causing sparks to fall to the ground was extinguished quickly.

“Another grass fire started by power lines arcing on Sunset that almost burnt a home and garage down. We got to it quick enough to get the flames out as they approached the structures,” French said.

Another power line snapped from the high winds at South Main and Lakeshore Drive, shutting down Lakeshore Drive and one driveway into Braums.

“We were on that call for 6 1/12 hours, waiting on OG&E,” French said.

The Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management activated its emergency operations center due to the fast-moving fires that prompted evacuations of several towns in the state over the weekend, including Leedey in the west, Stillwater and Mannford, among others.

Mandatory evacuations were also issued Monday, March 17, in the Tiger Mountain area in far northwest McIntosh County when a controlled burn on a farm spread to 2,200 acres.

Due to the heavy smoke, Lighthorse Police briefly closed Interstate 40 before state troopers reopened it as crews used fire hoses on the Tiger Mountain exit shoulder.

Almost 100 buildings in the area were ordered to evacuate before the flames were out, according to officials.

Numerous rural fire departments joined the Tiger Mountain Fire Department in containing the blaze.

The McIntosh County Emergency Management director said the only structure damage he found due to the fire was to a barn and a small outbuilding.

Phillips said a neartragedy occurred when a volunteer firefighter got lost while fighting a fire late Friday.

The firefighter was with the Salem Ryal department, a rural community in the far northwest corner of McIntosh County, almost in Okmulgee County.

“He took off on a blower and went in the wrong direction from the rest of the crew,” Phillips said.

A search party was forming when the lost firefighter found his way back after going missing for 2 ½ hours.

Jennifer Thompson, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Norman, described the fire conditions in the central and northern parts of the state as historic.

Windy conditions are expected to continue the rest of this week.