News9 still has ongoing coverage of the fire. Sending my best thoughts and prayers to those affected by it...
I have some pictures of some oaks going up on a wildfire I was on a couple years ago. I was on an engine on structure protection across highway from fire line waiting on fire. Trees were around 30 to 40 feet tall and had green leaves on them. When fire line hit them in the same conditions as today, they exploded and had flames shooting around 80 feet in air. If it weren't for being on a highway and having around 200 feet of pavement and short grass, I would not have been in fire line. My job was to turn fire from house and let it keep going, not to try and put out which was all but impossible.
Yeah, it's good to try and keep it from spreading when it's happening but even better to mow it down before hand. A 75 to 100 foot swath between tree lines and yards cut to 3-4 inches and raked up can do a whole lot to stop it if it does get started and another 75 to 100 feet around structures cut like a lawn will save homes. The fires near the refuge a couple years ago took some houses near someone I knew. The house that fared the best had a huge lawn all the way around.
It's just like the burn bans, can't do things reactionary have to be precautionary.
From my understanding though the controlled burn was yesterday but should have been planned out a bit better (day before supposed to rain) or had the fire department involved to make sure everything would be out by days end. Now some people have lost their homes and someone is going to be on the hook for it all.
Seen it twice since 2009 in Major Co. You can here it coming. Nothing like drafting water out of an above ground pool in conditions like today. That fire burned over 72k acres IIRC.
Million acre fire that started in Osage county from a cig thrown out a window back in the 90's. Started on HWY 60 and went way into Kansas.
We rode horses cutting fence to let the cows have a place to escape.
We rode horses cutting fence to let the cows have a place to escape.
Grass hopper, we actually had horseless carriages at the time. They didn't work well on the rocky bluffs. 
Amazing how many acres in the Osage are controlled burn every year without issue too.
Did they catch the guy what threw out the lit cigarette?
The ranch hands burn the ditches now to prevent another fire like the last one. The million acre fire was in the fall. Ranchers had to sell their entire herds because they had no grass, and nothing was going to sprout until spring. "certain" outside interests bought some of the ranches because of that.
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