Family of 5 barely escapes wildfires, finds shelter at Payne County Expo Center

Yahoo

18-03-2025

A family of five with their five dogs clustered in a corner of the Payne County Expo Center on Saturday. It was quiet, except for the murmur of Red Cross volunteers and a few families sitting on cots.
Robert Hand and his family – which included his mom, Kimberly Gibson, his brother, Daniel, his brother's girlfriend, Jennifer and his nephew, Jeremiah – had been trapped in their mobile home as winds whipped flames in a nearby field across from their home Friday.
The displaced family – along with three Boston Terriers and two Pit bulls – eventually found transportation to the Red Cross shelter set up at the Expo Center.
About 115 displaced people found a place to stay overnight Saturday after winds nearly 70 mph combined with low humidity resulted in wildfires that destroyed 170,000 acres across Oklahoma on Friday.
The family, other than Jeremiah, declined to be photographed.
Robert told the News Press he didn't know how or where the fire started, but when the family woke up Friday, he opened up all the windows.
Their mobile home was part of a small trailer park not far from Wellston, where State Highway 105 and Logan County intersect.
'I started smelling smoke,' Robert said.
A huge tree line blocked their view, with a wildlife refuge park behind it.
'You could see the smoke coming up over (there) ... the wind was so intense,' he said.
The family doesn't have a vehicle. No fire map was relaying accurate information, so they were going only by what they could see.
'We started trying to get our to-go bags together, but with no vehicle, it was all the way down to the last minute where there was fire on both sides of the road,' Robert said. 'And we were driving through the columns of fire just to get out. That's how last-minute it was.'
Deciding what to take with them was tough.
'Everything seems important, everything,' he said.
The family never received fire alerts on their phones, until they looked out the window and saw the flames. A shadow passed over the window as they discussed what to do, and when they walked outside, it was black and they could feel the heat – it was no longer wind.
'At one point, we're looking out there, like, 'Should we dig a hole that we could all (get in)?' Robert said. 'We did not know what we were going to do.'
By the time they could see the flames, they didn't know they were the last people in the neighborhood.
Luckily for them, he said, Charles, a friend of the family, came to check on their neighbors.
They had packed their bags earlier, but by the time they caught a ride out, they were piling dogs in and were only able to grab one or two bags. The embers and smoke even singed one of their pit bull's fur coat.
Jeremiah, Robert's nephew, said one minute he was on a call with friends, waiting for a new video game update.
'Next thing we know, it gets all dark, the power goes completely out because the fire chewed through one of the power lines,' Jeremiah said. 'We had to leave a dog behind because we couldn't get her in the car in time.'
He said that was around 2:30 p.m. – which he knew because that's when his game was updating. His grandma, Kimberly Gibson, said he was crying because they had to leave the dog, Missy, behind.
The ride out was harrowing.
'When we started pulling away, we noticed that right around the bend, right there, I mean, no more than 100 feet was the flames,' Robert said. 'That 100 feet disappeared real quick.'
They left their home around 3 p.m., but sat up at the end of the road waiting for about six hours.
The alerts on their phones told them to go to the Iowa Tribe Community Center that had been designated as a shelter. They found an empty building with chairs and water, nothing more.
At one point, they were in two vehicles and were separated for about an hour – not sure if they'd see each other again. The Red Cross eventually directed them to the Expo Center.
When they returned to their home that evening to see if there was anything left, the scene was 'post-Apocalyptic,' Robert said.
Of the 12 trailers in the mobile home park, none were left.
'It just didn't feel real, like the trees all burned from the inside and leveled as far as you could see,' Robert said. 'Somewhere where, you just got out of bed – to walk up and see it just totally gone. … Nothing but the frame on the ground.'
Jeremiah said the ruins looked like 'old abandoned ruins from medieval times. … It was really pretty and it was scary at the same time.'
Kimberly said her biggest fear was seeing the trees which looked like a 'haunted forest.'
'As we're driving by, some of the trees are starting to fall,' Kimberly said. 'I kept thinking … it's going to fall to the road.'
They did find the dog that had been left behind.
Safely back at the Expo Center finally, they tried to process what they had just been through.
'It's sinking in,' Robert said. 'It's very surreal.'
He said his brother's girlfriend, Jennifer, has a rental home, but they don't know if it's available right now.
Robert, originally from California, had been living and working in Texas and had just moved to Oklahoma two weeks ago to be with his family, bringing his dog with him.
'I was moving out here to start anew,' Robert said.
Growing up in California, Robert was used to preparing for natural disasters like earthquakes. But he said that Friday, no one had a 'bug out bag,' or a three-day disaster survival kit, prepared.
Robert had been on the search for a job. In the rush to leave, his birth certificate and drivers license had been left behind, and he'll need to start the process of replacing them so he can find employment.
'Now, I've just got to take it one problem at a time and see,' he said.
Robert said he was thankful for the Red Cross and their assistance.
'Otherwise, I don't know what we would have been doing,' he said. 'I'm not huge on handouts … but I can see it as necessary for some people,' which now included his family.