At least four fire fighters succumbed to the triple digit heat while battling grass fires in Oologah.
All of them were from the
Northwest Rogers County fire district.
One of them was sent to the hospital.
“You’re probably hitting close to 175 degrees, if not hotter than that,” described Northwest’s fire chief, David Puckett. “When we start hitting that heavy fuel it gets hotter.”
The flames off highway 169 and 4070 Road scorched about 1,500 acres. It left many neighbors without any more hay bales and threatened homes and cattle.
“I made the mistake of going over in the field to fight the fire because it didn't look like it was coming this way,” said homeowner, Ken Endrus.
His neighbor, The Branen family, lost about 250 bales of hay.
“Hay market is already short and a lot of people were done with their hay,” said Stan Branen.
The family kept watch while other family members worked with fire crews to fight back the flames from their other hay bales and their cattle.
“Cattle, that's the main thing, most cattle will get out of the way, that's a natural instinct, fear of fire,” said Branen.
Crews knocked out as much as they could, then mother nature took over and rained out the rest of the hot spots.
