Stitt: About 170,000 acres burned, almost 300 structures destroyed in Oklahoma wildfires
Authorities said more than 130 wildfires were reported in 44 counties across Oklahoma on Friday, and many are still active Saturday morning.
Well thanks everybody for coming out today and we’ve been around the state. We started over in Stillwater and we’re in Manford right now and I’ve got the leadership of the state with me that have kind of been touring the damage. But first off, I want to thank the media for the evacuation notices. Our alert system worked better than it ever has to let people know and have plenty of warnings on their phones and so the thing that struck me is. You know, unlike unlike tornadoes, we got everybody got evacuated and so we don’t have any reports of any fatalities from from homes, but the damage is unbelievable. I think there was one fatality from from an accident in *** vehicle driving into the smoke of some kind, but what we know right now is there’s about 170,000 acres that were burned and foresters up flying right now to kind of get the exact number. Um, we have last night I had *** report of about 293 homes slash structures that were destroyed and Still water it’s just amazing kind of walking through those neighborhoods and talking to the families and it’s, it’s, uh, um, you know, it’s just amazing you’ll have, you’ll have 4 houses in *** row burned and it’ll skip 2 and then another 4 and then back behind them and then here in Manford got hit pretty hard as well, um. So right now currently there’s 14,000 power outages, but really the evacuations were were just great. I talked to all these families and and um and they were able to get out and. The thing that breaks your heart is some of the some of the folks that were renters and they lost everything and they didn’t have any kind of renter insurance so we have the Red Cross and we have the different facilities and different nonprofits that are set up to help them with really they just have the clothes on their back right now and so Oklahoma Standard will step up and just neighbors are going to help neighbors like we always do. We’ve got as far as the ongoing, ongoing risk of fire throughout the state, I met with the meteorologist last night and it was just *** perfect storm. It was the humidity levels went down to record lows below 10%, and then with the winds where they were, it just dried everything out and. Uh, so we should have *** couple of good days in *** row here uh to get all the fires out because there’s *** little bit of risk coming back in maybe Monday or Tuesday. So, um, we’ve got, we’ve got uh some crews coming in from Louisiana, Arkansas, uh, to really help us stamp out the fires over over the weekend. Uh, but we’ll have, uh, we’ll have some some some other updates from our emergency management folks and uh just we’ll uh help these guys rebuild and on *** personal level, I lost, uh, uh, where I have *** little farm north of Luther. I lost my home at my uh my farmhouse, so really this kind of stuff hits close to home when those fires come through there’s just not not *** lot that you can do. Um, so with that I’ll just, uh, open it up to questions for we’ve got the mayor, we’ve got the fire chief, I think we’ve got secretary of Ag we’ve got, uh, the Speaker of the house, we’ve got the lieutenant governor with us and, uh, then when I was in Stillwater we had our, uh, local, uh, our senators there as well. Governor, have you considered asking power companies in the future to maybe look at cutoffs ahead of uh situations like this? You know, uh uh. Yes, and they did de-energize some lines and so we’re still trying to track down how do these fires start. We think there were some controlled burns that was happening *** few days before and some things got out of control, we think some of the power lines contributed to this. um, also some some controlled burns underneath right aways underneath those lines we need to look at that as *** state as well. Other states will do that. Um, and, um, you know, when you, when you, uh, when you have conservation and you have controlled burns that really helps with out of control fires like this so that’s something that I personally want to look at, um, PSO, I think we were in OG&E we have about 14,000 people without electricity right now, so they’re working like crazy to get that up. What’s the state of emergency mean for the people affected. So, uh, I’ll let Annie kind of talk to you about the, um, uh, state of emergency, but basically what that means is those that’s *** federal requirement that we have to do uh to tap into some of the federal resources. I was also on the phone with Secretary Christy Noam earlier today. She was uh she was actually in the air on Coast Guard One. I said, are you on Air Force One? And she was like, No, I’m on Coast Guard one, so. Um, but she’s, uh, she’s *** good friend and she just was, uh, reaching out to make sure that she knew that, uh, she’s here to support Oklahoma, so whatever we need, um, and so part of that, uh, declaration will help Annie start gathering the numbers and she’ll set up websites where people can can report uh the damage and she can get that up for uh federal assistance. Is there any more that the state could have done ahead of these anticipated wildfires while they were anticipated to prevent them? You know, I mean, great, great question and um there’s not *** when you’re have *** perfect storm like this with the humidity and these high high winds um you know we’ve heard, I mean that’s my question just like every Oklahoma man how do they start? what’s happening? And uh we knew there were *** few controlled burns from ranchers the the day or two before that it’s just hard to prevent that and then we had *** case of *** couple guys out welding and doing work on their farms and and um um you know I think I think we’ll do some postmortem look at what we can do and and part of that would be, uh, let’s really, let’s really do some controlled burns earlier maybe in the season and and get rid of some of the underbrush or when the timing’s right. Um, to make sure we don’t have the, we don’t have the uh transmission line starting things up and then we can also think about de-energizing at certain levels of uh. Of uh wind speeds that could be addressed in the leg? I think so. Uh, we’ve got the, we’ve got the speaker here, but, but I can assure you that that that OGE and our partners, uh, they, they wanna provide power to our homes and they’re and they’re trying to keep people safe so they’re looking at their grid as well and that’s also part of the part of the need to continue to upgrade and and continue to have uh um you know the right the right infrastructure in the state so Oklahomas will will continue to do that as well. Was there *** reason that the National Guard was not acting? Evacuations last night You know, there’s no real reason except we weren’t really requested, so the locals, the local sheriffs, municipalities, fire departments, also the alerts the alerts came right to the phones and so I was really quizzing our team last night at the emergency command center. Uh, making sure, but within 10 minutes we do that quicker than any other state when the locals say hey we’re seeing smoke and when our meteorologists are predicting things we’re sending that directly out to people’s phones, uh, but also just to brag on Channel 61 of the families I stopped and talked to, I said, Did you get *** notice on your phone or to the police? and she said Channel 6 said we’re watching that, uh, so really the importance of what you guys do, um, letting people know when to evacuate is really, really helpful. And then let me uh let me let uh uh Annie kind of give you an uh an update from emergency management and what she does when she when she talks to the feds and then we’ll uh we’ll let some of the other local folks uh uh answer some questions Annie. Good morning everyone. We worked diligently beginning actually last Friday with the Oklahoma Forest Service to start preparing for this event. We, as of this morning have reports of over 200. Homes lost and I will tell you related to the state’s readiness, every firefighter in this state, every resource that was had was out there. Task forces stayed very close to home last night because the risk was absolutely statewide. Once the risk did subside in other areas, we were able to get some task forces out and up, and the damages that are out there are still ongoing. We still have teams out there doing search and rescue. We still have fires smoldering across the state. And we did submit and get approved 8 fire management assistance grants last night from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. What that allows for is any of these response costs that the state governments, local governments, fire departments incurred last night in just putting everything together to try to put these fires out will be reimbursable. We also are getting near. *** threshold where we find we might be closer to being able to bring FEMA in for some assistance. It takes about 400 destroyed or major impacted structures statewide that are uninsured for FEMA to come in and provide assistance, and I want to remind everybody that that assistance level that they do provide is pretty limited. It’s about 5000 on average. Oklahoma. So what we really want to encourage everyone to do if you have insurance and you have questions about your insurance, we hope to connect you with our state insurance commission office. We want to prevent fraud in these cases, as always in disasters. We will have FEMA on the ground beginning probably Monday or Tuesday. We’re working on getting 3 teams into the state to go out and assess those damages along with the Small Business Administration. If FEMA is not approved, if we don’t have enough damage to make the request, the Small Business Administration. It takes 25 structures, major or destroyed, which is *** lot more reasonable. We can almost assure you that we are at that level, and they can provide low interest loans to those that have lost everything, and it is absolutely *** better financial opportunity to have *** long term recovery. In the meantime, we’ve been working with the governor’s office of faith-based initiatives, which has been wonderful to try. Get some resources in here from nonprofit entities, and we plan to set something up this week here at least in Manford and beginning to look at other areas throughout the week where those that have been impacted can go and find whatever resources they need. We’re here to support. We try to communicate as best as we can and we’re going to be here as long as the community needs us to be here. So thank you. Anybody else getting there? Any other questions? Yeah, Mayor, please. Good afternoon. It’s been *** rough night, I can assure you of that. I want to thank the governor for being here. I want to thank the vice governor for being here and also our representative Speaker Kyle Hilbert. So many years to thank. We got we got *** lot of help last night. We got help from Sand Springs, Bigsby had *** task, task force team come in from Rogers County. It got here kind of late, but they really helped us out *** lot, had *** lot of small community firefighters here also, but as Amy was saying, there were so many fires going on everywhere. What we usually rely upon as municipal aid wasn’t available last night, so it was kind of to each his own, and I know there are *** lot of people around the state suffering right now, but I appreciate you. Here, Governor, I appreciate the support that we’re getting. We’re setting up some food areas at the Phelps IGA store. There have been several vendors that have donated food and their time, and we appreciate that. I just want to say quickly that Mamford is *** strong town. It’s *** tight knit community, and this town will survive this. The community will come together as we always do. And we’ll get through this. Thank you. Thanks everybody. There’s gonna be people that want to help. What’s the best way anyone maybe living around Bamford? And If you want to get involved, I would encourage you to reach out to our office directly. You can visit our website at OEM.ok.gov. Also here locally they do have *** local emergency manager and that goes statewide. If you’re eager to help, please contact your local emergency manager and they can connect you in. Please do not self-deploy to these areas. They are still, as we mentioned, smoldering and *** little bit dangerous. We will issue calls for help as they arise. Special You know we’ve got uh we’ve got an emergency declaration uh in in place and then as the meteorologist and our team lets us know what we need to say on the burn ban, yeah, we’ll be the, we’ll be we’ll quickly uh quickly do that kind of thing and really it’s just, uh, you know, Oklahomans have to be really really careful uh when they’re burning ranch land and pasture land, uh, and we’ve got, you’ve got to contact your locals, uh, but, but also every county commissioner can look at that and they can do that as they need to, uh, county by county as well.
Stitt: About 170,000 acres burned, almost 300 structures destroyed in Oklahoma wildfires
Authorities said more than 130 wildfires were reported in 44 counties across Oklahoma on Friday, and many are still active Saturday morning.
Updated: 11:20 AM CDT Mar 15, 2025
Gov. Kevin Stitt says about 170,000 acres were burned and almost 300 structures were destroyed during the wildfire outbreak on Friday. Authorities said more than 130 wildfires were reported in 44 counties across Oklahoma on Friday, and many are still active Saturday morning. Some of the major fires were in Mannford, Stillwater, Guthrie, Leedey, Norman, Oklahoma City and Little Axe. The fire damage prompted Stitt to issue a state of emergency was declared for Cleveland, Creek, Dewey, Grady, Lincoln, Logan, Oklahoma, Pawnee, Payne, Pottawatomie, Roger Mills, and Stephens counties.>> Sky 5 surveyed some of the damage caused by Friday’s wildfire outbreak. Open the video player below to watch. The governor says he knows Oklahomans will help out each other in this time of need. “The Oklahoma Standard will step up, and just neighbors are going to help neighbors as we always do,” Stitt said. During a news conference Saturday, Stitt said he also lost a farmhouse located north of Luther. “Really, this kind of stuff hits close to home. When those fires come through, there’s not a whole lot you can do,” the governor said. Stitt also spent some of Friday night at the Emergency Operations Center and was briefed from the team there. The governor is surveying areas hit hardest Saturday morning and will hold a news conference at 10 a.m. in Mannford. “Sarah and I are heartbroken for the families and businesses who’ve suffered loss today,” Stitt posted on social media.
MANNFORD, Okla. —Gov. Kevin Stitt says about 170,000 acres were burned and almost 300 structures were destroyed during the wildfire outbreak on Friday.
Authorities said more than 130 wildfires were reported in 44 counties across Oklahoma on Friday, and many are still active Saturday morning. Some of the major fires were in Mannford, Stillwater, Guthrie, Leedey, Norman, Oklahoma City and Little Axe.
The fire damage prompted Stitt to issue a state of emergency was declared for Cleveland, Creek, Dewey, Grady, Lincoln, Logan, Oklahoma, Pawnee, Payne, Pottawatomie, Roger Mills, and Stephens counties.
>> Sky 5 surveyed some of the damage caused by Friday’s wildfire outbreak. Open the video player below to watch.
The governor says he knows Oklahomans will help out each other in this time of need.
“The Oklahoma Standard will step up, and just neighbors are going to help neighbors as we always do,” Stitt said.
During a news conference Saturday, Stitt said he also lost a farmhouse located north of Luther.
“Really, this kind of stuff hits close to home. When those fires come through, there’s not a whole lot you can do,” the governor said.
Stitt also spent some of Friday night at the Emergency Operations Center and was briefed from the team there. The governor is surveying areas hit hardest Saturday morning and will hold a news conference at 10 a.m. in Mannford.
“Sarah and I are heartbroken for the families and businesses who’ve suffered loss today,” Stitt posted on social media.
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Sarah and I are heartbroken for the families and businesses who’ve suffered loss today.
Tomorrow morning I’ll survey areas hit hardest by the latest outbreak of fires. Updates to come then.
— Governor Kevin Stitt (@GovStitt) March 15, 2025
