Braving The Fire: My Personal Experience of a Natural Disaster as a Farm Kid

Do you ever see or smell something that brings back memories or gives you that deja vu feeling? On Feb. 17, I got that feeling.

That Tuesday, I got a call that made my heart drop. My mom had called me after I got out of class to tell me that there had been a fire started in Beaver County, Okla. My first question was, “Where is my cow?”

The winds were pushing the fire northeast toward Ashland, where my grandparents live. She told me my grandparents had been evacuated and my dad had pinned our cattle up onto the wheat fields and was staying with them in case the fire reached them.

After I got off the phone with my mom, suddenly the same feelings I had, but a little bigger, came flooding back just as strong as the last time we had a wild fire close to home.

March 14, 2017 was a stress-filled day for my family, and the Starbuck Wildfire hit close to home. The day started just as normal. I went to school; all my classes were the same. It was a windy day with 80 mph gusts on a dry, hot day. My classmates and I were all at recess and looking over the school building, we could see a large black cloud of smoke. Jokingly, we talked about a fire and canceling school. There happened to be a fire that had started from the powerlines just outside the city limits.

After school was let out for the day, I had gone home and my parents were rushing around the house getting ready to head South to my grandparent’s house. That’s when I learned there had been a fire started in Beaver County, and that fire had spread north over the border and into the Ashland area. At the time, my grandparents lived 20 minutes from Ashland and the fire had already reached my grandparents’ house. So, my parents drove through the fires along the highway to help preserve my grandparents farm and livestock.

They were able to save 14 head of cattle that stood in the middle of a pond, and three dozen bales of hay in the wheat field.

The farm used to be covered with old shops and buildings that were centuries old. After the fire all that was left standing was the farm house, the smoke house, the chicken house, and the big shed. What then was ashes laying across the ground was my great-great-great grandpa’s blacksmith shop, the carolles along with the barn, the feed barn, the tool shed, the round shed, and the old outhouse. Not only did we lose those buildings, but more than 100 head of castle, hundreds of miles of fence, and the family horse.

The fire left a huge hole in every farmer’s pocket, as well as a large mess to clean up. That 2017 summer I spent down at my grandparents’ place picking up nails and small shards of metal with a magnet I dragged across the ground. The farmyard was covered in burnt, unusable farm equipment. The grass crunched under your feet, and the red dirt was brown, covered in black ash. As a 9-year-old, I thought it was pretty cool to take the ash and spread it all over my arms, face, and legs. As I got older, the outcome of that fire hit me harder.

When I heard there was another fire around the area, all those images ran through my head and I was worried sick about my family and our livelihood. The only good thing that came out of the Starbuck fire was my Baldy girl. She was abandoned by her mom in the fire and I took her in as my bucket calf and had her ever since.

A fire can look beautiful and Instagram worthy but it can also take everything from you in the blink of an eye.

Be aware of the fire bands in your area.

Jordan Stimpert is a Bucklin freshman studying Graphic Arts Technology. Follow her on Instagram @jordanstimpert.

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