[steel7]

What ashame. I sure hope they catch the nasty arsonist. A man was seen in a black auto in the area.
http://msntv.msn.com/news2/handler.a...wildfires?lite

[StillwaterTownie]

KRMG has some pictures, including several showing how the fire looked from a major intersection in Mannford. Red Flag Wildfires in Creek County | www.krmg.com

And a bunch of pictures of the fire near Glencoe where within or nearby at least 10 to 15 homes burned up. Fortunately, most of Glencoe was saved. UPDATE: Evacuating 4-mile radius north and east of Yost Road and Ripley Road as wildfire roars through » Local News » Stillwater NewsPress

[ougirl]

I know! It was awful, we should be working together not going around setting the fires. One thing is for sure, all the communities of Luther, Norman/Noble, Etc.. have all pulled together to help all the victims in need and that is one thing we should all be very proud of!!

[stillkit]

The Oklahoma Southern Baptist Disaster Relief team is mobilizing and on the way to help with the clean up.

We will have two command centers up and running, presumably by Monday at least. One will be at the First Baptist Church in Mannford and the other at 12 Corners Baptist Church in Noble. I don't have the phone numbers.

We will have feeding units at both locations, I think, and several ash out and chain saw crews to help homeowners clean up their destroyed homesites. Other teams will be coming from out of state, I believe. The response is just now being organized, so the information I have right now is incomplete, but that's what I know so far. We're planning for the teams to begin working on Monday and we will rotate crews every week until the job is done.

If you have a chainsaw or ash out need, please contact one of those churches and request help. It is free of charge and we will do all we can to help you. We won't require you to listen to a sermon, accept a tract or anything. We don't care what your religion is and we won't take a donation if you offer it, though our teams will be able to show you where you can do that if you like.

Of course, our first priority will be for those victims without insurance, but we might be able to help anyone. If you make a request, we'll send an assessor to look at the job first and tell you whether or not we can be of service to you. After the assessment is done, the job will go into the pile of jobs we'll keep at the command centers, ranked by priority, and the teams will get to them as quickly as they can. As I understand it, we have 150 houses to do already and we expect more.

In case you're wondering, "ash out" means cleaning up the burnt homesites and includes sifting the ash for valuables and keepsakes, removing all the debris down to the foundation and separating it to meet local requirements. We do not haul it off, though, as we don't have the capability of doing that. We also typically will not do any demolition to parts of the structure remaining unless it's something which might present a work hazard to our crews and is cleared by the property owner, insurance company and local authorities.

I'll post more information as I get it...unless I get the call too and then I'll be offline.

ps: Our crews have been working in New Mexico and Colorado following those fires, but we've now been called off to serve our Oklahoma neighbors.

[stillkit]

Here's an update:

I just got back from the area between Noble and Little Axe, OK where we have about 80 homes totally destroyed within roughly a 6 square mile area. We are also working other burn areas near Arcadia/Luther and Mannford, OK. Overall, we're dealing with more than 200 homes burned to cinders and about 7 or 800 other structures involved somehow.

We Southern Baptist disaster relief teams have the goal of cleaning up all the sites where someone has requested our help within the next 3 weeks. We have all our Oklahoma ash-out and chainsaw teams deployed, plus help from nearby states such as Texas and Kansas.

Still, though, it's a tall order to get it done that quickly, so we're asking for untrained volunteers to come to the churches I mentioned above, ready to work. All you have to do is be over 18, equipped with heavy gloves and a willingness to do major manual labor. We will provide a modicum of training, most of the equipment and a trained and experienced team leader to guide you through the clean up process.

If you're interested and not afraid of some hard work for your neighbors, please call the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma and they can give you the phone numbers and sites to contact in the areas I mentioned above. This is volunteer work and no pay is offered. We don't get any either! LOL

Here's the numbers to call for more information:

(405) 942-3000 / (405) 942-3800

The work involves removing metal debris from the burn site, perhaps sifting the ashes for valuables, and positioning ash to be either buried or removed. It's hot, hard, dirty work but as fulfilling as anything you'll ever do.