Sen. Pat Roberts visits areas, families affected by Kansas wildfires

Ranchers in Clark County lost anywhere from 3,000 to 9,000 head of cattle in Monday’s wildfire.

Fletcher Swayze is one of the few ranchers who can tell an upbeat story.

He led most of his herd to safety, 100 head of breeding red Angus cows, by tempting them with a bale of sweet-tasting cane hay loaded on his pickup truck. He led them to a green wheat field – and then watched in awe and fear as flames sometimes 10 feet tall surrounded him and his herd.

“Oh yeah, I was scared,” he said. “There was so much smoke at times I couldn’t see anything.”

He was totally surrounded by the wildfire, he said. But he saved the herd and two pet pit bull dogs, Gus and Minnie.

About 3,400 of the 3,500 acres of the ranch his parents, Carol and John Swayze, own were burned off. In the surrounding Red Hills, about 700,000 acres burned, with a fire line that moved, according to Clark County Sheriff John Ketron, at 60 miles per hour.

Ketron and his deputies had raced through the town of Ashland as the fire approached, calling out to people on public address speakers to get out of town fast.

“Then we went door to door,” he said.

The fire was terrifying to watch, Ketron said. And now, he said, the county that last Monday was one vast grassland grazing area is a desert. The grass was turned to black ash, and winds since then have blown all that away, leaving brown-gray dust.

Ketron said he has slept only about 16 hours in the four days and nights since the fire tore through Clark County. There’s no rest in sight, he said.

U.S. Sen. Pat Roberts, looking it over on Friday afternoon, worried about what could happen to Clark County’s fragile layer of topsoil. “The wind is gonna want to blow,” he said.

Some ditches Roberts rode past on Friday were already filling with drifts of dust.

Chuck McKinney, a Clark County commissioner, said ranchers have lost hundreds of miles of fencing. It could take years to rebuild that, he said.

Roberts, a friend of the Swayzes, visited their burned-off ranch as he toured damaged areas south of Dodge City on Friday and said there is much complicated work ahead to help victims.

He said Vice President Mike Pence told him Thursday that President Trump would soon announce disaster declarations that would provide money to help damaged areas. That declaration hasn’t happened yet.

“I wish they would just put him on a horse or something and get it done,” Roberts said.

Bureaucracy might move slowly, Roberts said.

“All of this is going to cost a lot of money, and right now I don’t think there is money in the current budget that fits the needs here,” he said. “So we’re going to have to figure all of that out.”

Joyce and Jerry Ediger, a retired couple living in Englewood, lost everything in the Monday wildfire except for their car, truck and tractor.

Family photos, all their clothes, furniture, house – gone. Their son, Monty, who lived up the street, lost his home too.

Roberts hugged Joyce Ediger after arriving in Englewood, and told her he would do what he could for them.

She told him: “We’ll be fine. The Lord provides.”

Five families in Englewood lost their homes, said Mayor Olen Whisenhunt. “There are junk piles in town here that used to be homes,” he said.

Lorri Kay, another resident of Englewood, showed up to meet Roberts in the town on Friday, with Colby, her grandson.

Her husband and two of her sons are volunteer firefighters and rushed to fight the flames on Monday, she said. One of her sons called to ask her if she could try to save the family’s horses.

She tried, and saved one, she said. But one other one had to be euthanized after the fire raced through town.

Roberts rolled into Englewood from the south, and for miles around he could see nothing but brown and windblown dust from horizon to horizon.

Ketron said his deputies and others have a big health problem to solve – burying thousands of cattle killed this week.

County officials estimate anywhere from 3,000 to 9,000 cattle died in Clark County. Officials want to get them buried as soon as possible to protect public health. Ketron doesn’t have the equipment or resources to help do that fast. But he said police, rescue and National Guard units from 40 jurisdictions have shown up to help.

Ketron on Friday said firefighters are still battling hotspots that could restart wildfire. A number of trees in Clark County are still burning, he said.

The Clark County fire started in Oklahoma, where it is being called the “Starbuck” fire.

No one knows exactly where the fire started or even how, but Bonnie Strawser, a spokesperson for Oklahoma’s incident management team, said she is optimistic: “Those fire investigators are amazing what they can find out.”

This story was originally published March 10, 2017 at 2:23 PM with the headline "Sen. Pat Roberts visits areas, families affected by Kansas wildfires."