This article was originally published by KOSU, an independent news service based in Oklahoma.
One of the hardest-hit communities was Ditch Valley, tucked in the northwest corner of Harper County. During an interview with KOSU on Feb. 20, three days after the fire broke out, Harper County Sheriff Thomas McClendon drove around Ditch Valley, speaking with neighbors and surveying damage.
"Ditch Valley is one of the most beautiful places in this county with some of the richest history," McClendon said. "They pull the water off of the Cimarron River right there every year, and that's what irrigates these fields."
The fields that normally grow alfalfa or graze cattle have been burned to the dirt. Some parts are blackened. Other areas, where the ash has blown away, look like a moonscape.
Still other areas escaped the blazes. The charred ground reaches just to the edge of a pigpen McClendon has returned to several times since the fires began. Inside, a handful of piglets bounce around, their lively energy in stark contrast with the blackened grass and razed buildings around them.
"They've grown quite a bit just in the last couple of days," McClendon said. "Looks like they've probably been getting fed. They survived."
McClendon had visited this ranch just after the fire. He said he came across their owner, who told him she was confident it would all be okay.
"That lady looked at me, and she only had her piglets left and a couple of chickens, and she said, 'We're still farmers.'" McClendon said. "That right there, that's what it's all about."
Animals not out of the woods
With around 3,200 residents, Harper County is Oklahoma's least populous. But it's also home to more than 80,000 cattle and 60,000 pigs.
Some of them weren't as lucky as the frolicking piglets, as evidenced by a dead adult pig that apparently died from smoke inhalation nearby.
OSU Extension agricultural economist Amy Hagerman and her team are still working to figure out how many livestock died in February's fires.
But the number is likely in the hundreds, if not thousands. Just across the border in Kansas, one rancher lost more than 300 Angus cattle.
Hagerman said producers generally make their entire income in one or two big checks each year, so any loss makes a big difference. And fires like this can cause several missed paydays.
"Any calf that you lost this spring, first of all, you don't have that calf to sell in the fall when you would normally be weaning and selling calves," she said. "If you're in a situation where you're raising replacement animals, that replacement heifer gets weaned in the fall, you're raising her up for another year after that. So you're feeling the loss of that calf — that died in 2026 — in 2028."
And Hagerman said there are still ongoing risks even now that the blazes are extinguished.
"You're watching those animals for any sort of long-term effects that occur because of it," she said.
It might take days or even weeks for issues like hoof damage and pneumonia to become apparent. Reproductive issues in breeding stock can also be a problem.
"Let's say you had a bull out in that pasture — that bull is going to have to have his sperm tested after that level of heat exposure," Hagerman said. "That's just one example, right, of longer-term testing and making sure that those animals haven't taken some kind of damage that you can't see."
Hagerman said people can also take on damage that's hard to see after a disaster like this.
"After that initial response is finished, after that initial adrenaline begins to wear off, that's really where the stress can sneak in and hit you hard," she said. "I think it's important to have an ongoing conversation about supporting mental health in communities where an event like this has occurred."
Fire response
Harper and Beaver Counties have been hit by multiple fires in the past decade.
"Everybody around here is scared from the 2017 fire that we had, the Starbuck Fire," McClendon said. "That one almost burnt this whole county."
Harper County has no career firefighters, only volunteers. So the people who drove toward the flames had been working their ranches, their homes or their regular jobs earlier that day. Those included three men from the small community of Rosston who were injured when their fire truck flipped over near Ditch Valley.
The county also has no police departments. McClendon said he and his deputies responded to that accident and were otherwise working to evacuate people from their homes. Utilities workers were out during the fires as well.
"Whenever this fire took place, you're looking around and you're seeing these men that's out here on their fire trucks and trying to do everything they can," McClendon said. "You see the scare in their face. You see the worry. People just don't — they don't get that."
The Ranger Road Fire began in Beaver County on Tuesday, Feb. 17, and moved into Harper and Woods Counties that same evening. In the meantime, fires burned in Woodward and Texas Counties. The next morning, Gov. Kevin Stitt declared a state of emergency in three of those counties, but Harper County was left off the list.
McClendon took to Facebook on Feb. 19 to question whether his neighbors would receive the disaster assistance they needed. Later that day, Stitt amended the state of emergency to include Harper County.
McClendon said there was a breakdown of communication at the county level, and he doesn't blame the governor for leaving his county off the initial emergency declaration. But he said it was tough to watch fire crews from across the state drive through Harper County to get to Beaver, where the emergency was official.
"You had people coming in from all over, and rightfully so," McClendon said. "I was amazed to see it. Unfortunately, it all broke out at the same time, and so all those resources were split up."
Being included in the state of emergency will make Harper County eligible for some federal disaster relief, and it lets non-profits and other donors know help is needed there.
Hagerman said a damage report will also help generate and target donations and support. The OSU Extension is still crunching the numbers on what Oklahomans lost in last month's fires. Monetary losses are usually less in areas that have already been struck by recent fires.
But the emotional losses still hit, and people can end up feeling powerless.
"When a large, widespread, fast-moving fire hits a piece of land, you can't move the piece of land out from in front of the fire," she said. "You can do your best to create ways for your cattle to have some bare ground or some green pasture to escape to. You can think about your evacuation plan. But the reality is that the fire doesn't really respect location."
Losses still being totaled
Although the number of homes lost in Ditch Valley is still unclear, McClendon counted at least six. Many structures burned; it's just unclear how many were people's houses.
"Little buildings everywhere," McClendon said. "I don't even know how to get started on the amount of buildings that was lost."
Lacey Bond lived in one of them. Her in-laws own it, but Bond had been living in and caring for the place for a year. Now it's gone, just a razed pile of gray.
"It could have been much worse," she said. "We could have been in the house. I got myself and the dogs out, the cats. And the horses are okay — they're hanging out in that wheat field."
In addition to the house and surrounding structures, much of Bond's fencing was gone.
In 2024, a similar-sized fire caused an estimated $33 million in damage in western Oklahoma. About one-fifth of that was the cost of repairing or replacing hundreds of miles of burned fences.
Fires also mean cattle don't have grass to graze. But Bond says people have stepped up to help with that.
"There's been loads and loads of hay hauled across the country here showing up everywhere," Bond said. "I think they're running out of space to store it all, but it's going to be needed continuously for the next few weeks at the very least."
Hagerman and other researchers are still working to tabulate how much fencing, hay, vet bills and structure loss from this year's February fires will cost.
McClendon doesn't expect many residents to leave after these fires, even if they lost homes and livestock. Many of them are descended from people who lived through the Dust Bowl and chose to stay in the hardest-hit part of the state.
"They'll rebuild, they'll rebuild," he said. "There's people in this county that's lost their homes three times on the eastern side of the county. There's one rancher over there that's lost it, I know of, three times in a matter of five years. He rebuilt. Fire come back through, burned him down."
But in the meantime, McClendon said, there are blessings among the losses.
"Not everything is sad on this, though," McClendon said. "This will all turn green. It'll all be beautiful. This is probably the best thing that's happened to the land. It's just the heartache that comes with it, you know?"
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