Volunteers at burned Kansas ranches say helping is what ‘real Americans do’

Late Wednesday evening, Kim Hazen’s cellphone vibrated three times in three minutes. So it had gone all week, up to 30 or more calls a day. Counting on her fingers, she tallied calls from 11 states in just two days, and admitted she’d probably left some out. All were from people wanting to come help the area ravaged by the 711,950-acre wildfire.

“You couldn’t stop them (from coming) if you wanted to. They have their minds made up they have to come help, and they are,” said Hazen, a local resident helping to match volunteer workers with area ranchers. “They’re not asking if they should. They’re telling us they are. We’ve got a guy driving all the way from California that wants to help, he’ll do anything. We’ve got 25 coming from Michigan.”

As Hazen talked, Teresa Jones, her daughter and eight other teenagers from Labette County in eastern Kansas finished dinner at a nearby table. The next morning they picked up debris from one of nearly 40 homes destroyed in the fires. Eventually they helped clean up damaged fences.

“This is what America is all about. This is the thing real Americans do, help one another,” Jones said Thursday morning, as she worked on a ranch 20 miles north of Ashland. “This is the way it’s supposed to be. This is the way it is out here.”

‘Big hearts’

Jones’ family sent hay from their farm to feed area cattle days after the fires.

“But we knew we needed to do more,” Jones said. “My daughter, Sheyenne, came up and said we had to go help. All these other kids were ready and willing, right away, too, on their spring break. Kids like these have such big hearts.”

In another part of fire-scorched Clark County, Iowan Seth Phillips put in his sixth straight 10- to 12-hour day of working with cattle or fixing fence. He’d arrived last weekend with college friends. His friends left after three days, but the damage he saw made Phillips decide to stay longer. He’s now stranded, with no vehicle.

He hopes to find a ride to Wichita this weekend, saying friends would probably take him the rest of the way. College classes begin, after spring break, on Monday.

“If I don’t find a ride, I guess I’ll just stay and volunteer for another week,” Phillips said. “I had to come down here and help. I only thought about it a little bit, and I started calling trying to find out what I could do.”

Hazen said some of the 200-plus volunteers that have come to the area over the past two weeks haven’t even called.

“We had three guys come in and say they came to help with fences,” Hazen said. “They’d brought their own tractor. I figured they were locals, but their license plate was from Indiana. They’d just picked up and come to Ashland. We’ve had quite a few people just walk in and say, ‘What can I do? … Where do I need to go?’ So many people think nothing of driving eight to 10 hours just to help a day or two in a place that’s not very much fun, where things aren’t very pretty.”

Thousands of tons of donated hay began arriving the same day the last of the Clark County fires were extinguished. The shipments have continued. Some have been convoys of 10 or more semis. Others have been a small trailer, with a few bales, pulled by a standard-sized pickup.

The volunteers began arriving a few days later. Members of the local Christian Church began feeding them, first from the church and then a local abandoned restaurant. Eventually they cleaned out the church’s summer camp at the south end of town. As well as providing meals, they can bunk up to 50 women and 50 men in two bunkhouses. Food to feed the dozens of volunteers has been almost entirely donated. Some volunteers are being housed and fed by Clark County residents.

Not all of the work has been out in the charred pastures.

‘We’re all Kansans’

Mary Rogers isn’t physically capable of doing a lot of ranch work, so she spends long days in the camp’s cafeteria, helping with meals and getting volunteers outfitted with things like donated gloves. She said she didn’t feel comfortable at her home, in Edgerton, as soon as she learned of the fires.

“When I read about everything out here, what was happening to people’s livelihoods, I had to come out. It was like a pull that once it got started, it wouldn’t stop. I had to come help the best I could,” said Rogers, who crammed a pickup full of about $1,500 in donated materials, placed an American flag across its tailgate and made the six-hour drive to Ashland. “This is what people are supposed to do. We’re all Kansans, and we’re all Americans, and this is what Americans are supposed to do for each other.”

Last week the average age of volunteers dipped significantly as spring break freed youths to spend several days working on the ranches.

Amy Joyce brought her four children from their farm/ranch near Denton, in extreme northeastern Kansas. Her husband stayed behind to keep their operation caught up on chores. They spent Thursday doing the sweaty, sooty job of helping to remove old fencing. She, too, said she felt a pull to come help, and an inner pain that only eased once they’d arrived.

On another burned-out fence, in another part of the county, friends Gabrielle Wingert and Reagan Butler pulled staples to free barbed wire from fence posts. Behind them, friend Lane Holliday and rancher Dave Arnold pulled the posts from the ground.

The three young adults were part of a group of about 10 from a Christian group from Manhattan.

“I’m a college student, so I can’t afford to give any money, but I can give labor all day,” said Butler, who’d just spent a few days at a Christian retreat in Colorado. “Part of being a Christian is that we’re supposed to serve others.”

As well as giving labor, parents like Joyce and Jones said the volunteer work would teach their children valuable lessons about helping others, the challenges of agriculture and the satisfaction of doing something positive, as a family.

Hazen said they have volunteer crews scheduled for at least the next two weeks. She is hoping the area can find someone who can devote more time to coordinating the projects. She and two other women taking calls are working full-time jobs while trying to coordinate the volunteers.

Because of their independent lifestyles, rancher Bernie Smith said it’s been difficult for some ranchers to ask for, and accept, help from the strangers. Knowing the volunteers would gain valuable experience, and have memories that would last a lifetime, is one reason Smith agreed to let the dozen teens from eastern Oklahoma help with fencing projects on his ranch near Englewood.

Smith’s family lost more than 200 cattle, and many miles of fencing. A volunteer fireman, he’s daily saddened as he drives by the remains of friends’ homes that couldn’t be saved. But he’s seeing good in the volunteer program, especially young helpers.

“There’s so much these kids can learn out here working with us. This is really good for those kids, too,” he said. “I’m telling you, I’m 56 years old and this is the greatest thing I’ve ever been a part of. I was kind of on the bad end of it (with monumental losses), but there’s a lot of good being done. This has renewed my faith in the American people. We’ve got problems but we’re great when it comes to things like this.”

This story was originally published March 24, 2017 at 7:25 PM with the headline "Volunteers at burned Kansas ranches say helping is what ‘real Americans do’."