Jesus Jaime Garcia lost basically everything he had in Stillwater.
He’d only been living here for five months, working as an electrician on the windmills, harvesting the power of the breeze as it sweeps across Oklahoma.
But he was let off work early when the wind started picking up Friday afternoon – gusting as high as 70 miles per hour.
“I went to Walmart to shop,” he said in an interview translated from Spanish. “When I got back here, there was a fire.”
By the time he was ready to unload his groceries, it was too late to do anything about the flames. His mobile home was a complete loss Saturday morning.
His household, which he shares with a friend, was one of about 50 lost to a spate of fires in Stillwater. Many more raged across the state. By Saturday morning, Oklahomans were left picking up the pieces across 170,000 acres of scorched earth.
Gov. Kevin Stitt said one person was killed in a car crash after driving into smoke, while disaster officials said an estimated 293 structures were destroyed.
Garcia’s landlord, Cheryl Rabet, also lost her home, along with two of the RVs she rented out for income on the same lot with 23 others, which were among the ill-fated buildings to be licked and subdued by the flames.
Rabet said she and her husband were at home. And everything happened so fast…too fast.
“We were in the house at the RV park, and we just. I mean, it was there in a heartbeat and we didn't have a chance to grab anything,” she said. “We grabbed one of our cats and that was about it.”
Their other cat, Momo, couldn’t outrun the fire. He was 16 years old. Myia, their daughter, was at school.
“They came and they picked me up and they said, ‘Myia, we have to go,’” Myia Rabet said. “They escaped. Barely. I mean. To think I could have come home? And both of my parents could have been gone.”
Natalie Brown is the Stillwater Public School district’s family resources specialist. She says the town was prepared for the wind, a handful of power outages and some predictably Oklahoma-esque dust clouds.
“But not the fires,” she said. “The wind just picked up quickly and then the smoke started happening clear on the other side of town, and it smelled all the way over here.”
Stillwater Public Schools had set up a triage center Saturday for the impacted people, handing out the essentials lost in the fire, like toothpaste, toiletries and more.
Other relief efforts are underway. The city has established an email for people who need resources and a donation drop-off at the Stillwater Armory. The Payne County United Way also set up a specific donation page. The Red Cross has been providing support, food and other resources for shelters.
As residents return to their homes to gauge their situations, Brady Moore, Stillwater city manager, said neighborhoods have unsafe conditions. Power lines are being monitored, and crews have been dispatched to turn off water and gas lines. If residents see hazards, Moore said they should call 911.
For recovery resources, visit the City of Stillwater’s website.
