Wildfires have caused the greatest destruction outside of Tulsa, but that doesn’t mean the city’s firefighters haven’t been busy.
Since Friday, fires throughout Oklahoma have scorched 170,000 acres and have killed at least four people. The fires came from extremely low humidity and high winds.
Over the past week, Tulsa firefighters responded to 78 downed power lines compared to three lines down over a weeklong period a month ago. Fire department spokesperson Andy Little said this is significant because most of the grassfires in the city were caused by downed lines.
Firefighters responded to 68 grassfires and 47 open burns — that is, smaller grassfires — over the last week.
“The previous month, we had zero grassfires in that time period and 15 open burns. So it’s clear that just extreme winds, low relative humidity and dry vegetation, it was kind of the perfect storm, if you will,” Little said.
Tulsa saw 27 structure fires in that time, which Little said is common for a five-and-a-half-day period.
Little praised the firefighters for not letting the grassfires spread to the homes.
"Now, we did have some people that lost their homes, but I say all that to say it could have been much worse,” he said.
Little said the fire department preemptively readied more fire vehicles than usual ahead of Friday in anticipation of the fires.
He also said Tulsa firefighters responded to multiple calls for mutual aid.
"That first night, we responded to Mannford in the evening to help them out. We sent three engines, a district chief and a grass rig,” he said.
Mannford residents were ordered to evacuate their town Friday night because of the fires.
