Oklahoma Wildfires
Oklahoma isn’t on the east or west coast, so I don’t expect the cable news stations to cover this:
Multiple wildfires in Oklahoma, spreading quickly. HIGH winds and dry air are setting the perfect condition.
Velma, Loco and Meridian Oklahoma evacuated. I-35 in Perry Oklahoma is closed. Sparks Oklahoma has been evacuated. Bradley OKlahoma is evacuated.
Citizens are asked to go to Midwest City Oklahoma for a shelter being set up to house them until the emergency passes.
Update 1:
Here is a link to a video feed.
Here is a map with some of the biggest fires.
Update 2:
Hennipen and Tatum Oklahoma have now been evacuated. Wind Gusts up to 60+mph. Up to 70mph in some areas.
Update 3:
I was hoping the fire would miss it, but the fire in Choctaw is now entering a cedar forest. Cedar is more or less Nature’s Napalm.
Tags: Oklahoma, wildfires
This entry was posted
on Thursday, April 9th, 2009 at 4:20 pm and is filed under Open thread.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Both comments and pings are currently closed.
Comments and respectful debate are both welcome and encouraged.
Comments are the sole opinion of the comment writer, just as each thread posted is the sole opinion or post idea of the administrator that posted it or of the readers that have written guest posts for the Blogmocracy.
Obscene, abusive, or annoying remarks may be deleted or moved to spam for admin review, but the fact that particular comments remain on the site in no way constitutes an endorsement of their content by any other commenter or the admins of this Blogmocracy.
We're not easily offended and don't want people to think they have to walk on eggshells around here (like at another place that shall remain nameless) but of course, there is a limit to everything.
Play nice!
Duncan Oklahoma is also taking people in at the fairgrounds there.
Also fires in Edmond Oklahoma and Stillwater.
New ones reported in Wellston Oklahoma.
Highway 76 North of Lindsay Oklahoma is closed. 12 homes destroyed in LIndsay Oklahoma.
Choctaw High School is about to get hit next, you can see the flames across the street from it. smoke covering most of the school.
Here in the rustic northern parts of NM the winds have been bellowing most vehemently. No fires yet *crosses eyes* but as OK knows things can change in a New Jersey minute.
I have seen many great damaging fires having lived in the Los Angeles area for most of my life.
Good Lord. already 20 homes destroyed in ONE subdivision in Midwest City Oklahoma.
CNBC talking about traits of Billionairs.
MSNBC ACTUALLY poking fun at Karl Rove and downplaying his statements about President Obama, instead insisting that President Obama is still really popular and therefore Karl Rove is wrong.
CNN talking about amnesty.
FOX talking about Facebook and Wells Fargo making a profit.
meanwhile, back to the massive stream of wildfires spreading from northern texas all through Oklahoma. I guess we’re not important enough for the Drive Bys.
Serves the crazy OK conservatives right
/sarc
Prayers to everyone there
Midwest City’s Fire Marshall is estimating at least 80 homes destroyed in his area as of 45 minutes ago.
The wind in Oklahoma can be very bad, and I guess that might be playing a part in how and why the fires are spreading so bad.
I suppose if a natural disaster isn’t happening in New York, Los Angeles or New Orleans, the media don’t care.
Lance,
This should be on the news. I mean these people are losing their homes.
80 Homes, Poor people!
Just woke up. I don’t know the final tally, but some of the fires are still burning.
winds are gusting into the 30’s today, so it isn’t as bad as yesterday. A little more humid but no rain coming until this weekend.
Fox news has a small section on it, coupling it with a story on a tornado in Arkansas.
CNN has a story under “More News” that says “Fires Scorch Southwest, charring one town.” (one town?!)
MSNBC mentions “Texas, Okla. scorched like ‘war zone’” . . . right under the announcement that the guy who made Dungeons and Dragons died.
Fox is the only one that has it up in their main page.
Heck, MSNBC has ASU nixing an Honorary Degree for Obama as a more important story.
ooooo, a guy is driving fast down the highway away from police in Long Beach, CA.
THAT makes national news…….
*shakes his head*
They really do only care about the east and west coast and that’s it.
uh…. they’ve stopped all news coverage on Fox to talk about this high speed pursuit.
A woman driver, they say, running from police after a domestic disturbance.
…
shoot the driver.
I live in Oklahoma, and fire missed my house by 3 miles. The wind was blowing the other way. I grew up in Ok and spent 13 yrs in TX and just moved back. The national news has NEVER covered this area much at all unless a hurricane is coming up the gulf. It’s been this way for decades now. Everyone is correct that the east, west, and south east coast are the only important area to broadcast. Major EF5 tornadoes arent even broadcasted nationally in the most active tornadoe prone area in the WORLD!! That’s buisness.
This news story was actually on Google News’ front page today (in the “US News” section or whatever they call it):
Oklahoma official says blaze intentionally set
Excerpt:
Lance
What is really sad is people are losing their homes in OK and here in LA or la, la land they spend almost the entire news broadcast on the Angles pitcher that died in a car wreck. Which was sad, but give me a break, people die in car wreaks everyday, but its only news if you play pro-sports, its beyond stupid with this drive-by media.
17. CloudyDay
The fire was LIKELY intentionally set, but they don’t believe it was malicious. More likely they were just screwing around and the fire got out of control, as compared to TRYING to set the place on fire. However, that wasn’t the ONLY intentional fire. One of the other BIG fires was started as a controlled burn…. on a WINDY day… that (suprisingly) got out of control.
18 bar
Heh… I find that EXTRA funny since most of the time, Fox was talking about a high speed pursuit taking place in LA. So… NATIONAL coverage over 1 car chase took precident over wildfires raging across a ‘flyover’ state….. except in LA (Where it happened) where it was trumped by a dead baseball player.
Nice….