Fires in Oklahoma caused damage in March and Governor Stitt takes action.
Governor Kevin Stitt has launched a Wildland Fire Response Working Group in order to increase preparedness for potential future wildfires. Wildfires began ramping up intensity specifically on March 14, taking four lives and destroying approximately 600 homes across Oklahoma, reported oklahoma.gov. The new group will develop a “comprehensive set of recommendations to enhance Oklahoma’s wildfire mitigation, suppression, and recovery capabilities through unified response efforts, interagency coordination, and strategic partnerships” reported oklahoma.gov. The Forestry Department has still not concluded nor reported fully on what happened on March 14, giving inconsistent and incorrect information reported on oklahoma.gov. Oklahoma.gov provided a map illustrating what happened on that day with how many officers were sent to particular incidents in the different locations mainly in eastern Oklahoma along the border to Missouri and Arkansas. Other fires were centred in and around Oklahoma City, with some on the highway between Oklahoma City and Tulsa. There were some located on the west border of Oklahoma however the majority was on the east. Oklahoma.gov provided that there were 49 firefighting personnel fighting fires across 92,593 acres and another 47 fire fighting personnel across 2320 acres proving a failure by forestry to triage the fires.
The key objectives of the Wildland Response Working Group will aim to improve interagency coordination by improving how agencies on the local, county, tribal and state intersect including emergency management and law enforcement alongside others collaborating reported on oklahoma.gov. Furthermore, they will attempt to mitigate the efforts by identifying strategies for fuel reduction and community risk awareness reported oklahoma.gov. They will allow for grants and funding to better equipment and allow for those working and affected to be better prepared according to oklahoma.gov. This will then help mitigation attempts and capabilities. By being in partnership with private sectors and stakeholders this will allow organisations and groups such as the Oklahoma Farm Bureau utility providers and landowner associations to add to this community of fire resilience reported oklahoma.gov. By engaging with academic and research institutions such as Oklahoma State University who provide the state’s fire service training land grant institution will allow the integration of data modelling and public education into the strategy according to oklahoma.gov. The wildfire response working group also wants to work in coordination with the Oklahoma Legislator to explore changes in the response effort and invest in long term solutions, reports oklahoma.gov. This group will be co led by the Secretary of Public Safety Tricia Everest and the Secretary of Agriculture Blayne Arthur reports oklahoma.gov.
Governor Kevin Stitt released the State Forestry Chief in his recent state of the state address in Broken Arrow due to the fact that the Secretary of the Department of Agriculture and the Director of Emergency Management found the state forestry service only deployed half of its resources to fight the fires in March reported News Channel 8. This position was the Oklahoma Forestry Director Mark Goeller reported Oklahoma News 4. Stitt says “We were calling on getting people in from Arkansas, getting people in from Louisiana to come help us fight, and when I found out that all of our fire trucks and our hoses were not pointed at those fires, I hit the roof, like, with frustration, four people died, and I’m gonna hold the bureaucracy accountable” reported News Channel 8. Stitt said, “As governor, it is my duty to protect all 4 million Oklahomans. It is imperative that I ensure that those serving its state government share in that duty and work to execute it everyday” reported Oklahoma News 4.
Matthew Weldin, the Deputy Chief at Coweta Fire Department commented that they would not have been able to handle it as well if it weren’t for their team of 15 volunteer firefighters reported News Channel 8. Weldin said “We would have had to rely on other jurisdictions more heavily if we didn’t have this volunteer component, and we want to try to minimize that. We want to be able to take care of our jurisdiction” reported News Channel 8. One of the volunteers, Taylor Myers said, “I volunteer, and, you know, people say, like, oh, you could just try it, you know, get experience, see if you like it. And I fell in love with it” reported News Channel 8.
