PEMA Professional Energy Marketers Association
With more than a million acres burned in wildfires that started in the Texas Panhandle and swept into western Oklahoma, officials feared the blazes would only grow over the weekend with little of them under control.
The fires have left two dead in the Panhandle including truck driver Cindy Owen who fled her truck north of Pampa, Texas and tried to outrun the flames. Eighty-three year old Joyce Blankenship was another victim—caught in her Hutchinson County home that was destroyed.
Beyond the human toll, ranchers whose pastures were darkened by the fast-moving fires are counting their losses of cattle. It could be in the hundreds or perhaps thousands. Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller told Reuters last week he fears the wildfires killed tens of thousands of livestock. He is unsure of the exact numbers lost but said “the number is going to be very large.”
“It looks like a moonscape up there,” Miller said. “There’s absolutely zero vegetation. The cattle that do survive, they have absolutely nothing to eat.”
Western Oklahoma farmers and ranchers have pitched in and donated hay to the victims, according to KOCO TV News.
Ranchers in northeast Oklahoma are doing the same, reported KOTV 6 News.
Similar efforts have been made by farmers and ranchers in southern Kansas, according to KWCH TV in Wichita.
For the ranchers in Texas, it is a somber time as they learn how many cattle they lost.
“We’re picking up deads today,” X-Cross-X Ranch operator Chance Bowers told the Associated Press. A bulldozer was used to move dozens of blackened carcasses on the side of a road where a giant claw hook loaded them into the back of an open trailer.
“These cows you see dead are worth between $2,500 and $3,000 apiece,” Bowers said. “Financially, it’s a massive, massive burden on us.”
He told the AP the ranch will likely lose 250 head of cattle.
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