STILLWATER, Okla.—Texans on Mission volunteers spent two weeks responding to needs after wildfires tore through Stillwater, affecting about 200 homes in the area and 74 campers at nearby Lake Carl Blackwell.
While Texans on Mission teams battled high winds and blowing ash as they helped survivors sift through the ashes for valuables, the final day was markedly different.
A series of stormfronts dumped rain on the volunteer crews, turning the ash into a fine mud that caked onto their protective suits as they worked.
Ernest McNabb was unit leader for the disaster relief team, working primarily with members of Paramount Baptist Church in Amarillo. He said his team was responding to a fire scene that was “really kind of crazy.”
“The fires that came through here in Oklahoma, in this area, they acted like a ball of fire that was just bouncing around from house to house,” he explained. “And it (the fire) would just land on a house and burn it down, and then it would move on to another house.”
McNabb said Texans on Mission teams had “been cleaning up the ash and getting the metal and stuff out of it. It’s just really a mess. These people, they lost everything.”
Volunteers worked “in the mud and in the ash and in the rain … just trying to salvage a little memento or two,” he said.
In addition to cleaning homesites, the team also cleared burned trees.
“In the week or so we’ve been here, we’ve probably cut down 120, 130 trees that have burned up,” McNabb said.“So, it’s a lot of cleaning up, getting them ready to rebuild, and a lot of tree trimming. And it’s really, really sad.”
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‘Give them a little bit of hope’
When asked about the impact on survivors of the fires, Amarillo team member David Pinales, a retired firefighter, became emotional.
“Well, I heard about the fires, but I had no idea that it was to this extent,” he said. “This is my first full year of deployment … and this has been a real eye-opening. …”
He paused, choked with emotion, before continuing: “I can’t imagine what these people think, and I can’t imagine what the people living next door to all this devastation must feel. You know, all their neighbors and friends that quite possibly may not even move back.
“Lives have definitely been changed for a long time. And I’m just really happy that maybe through the little bit of work that we do that we can give them a little bit of hope. I’m really thankful that the Lord is able to use us to do that.
“And we may never say one word to them, but when they come and they see what we have done, we’re hoping that they see the love of Jesus through that work.”
‘My spirit’s been so blessed’
Working in Stillwater marked the first disaster relief deployment for Rhetta and R.J. Rogers of Lubbock.
“I was retiring, and I needed to find something to do,” he said.
A friend at church, Brad, operates a Texans on Mission skid steer. Brad recommended R.J. consider volunteering for disaster relief, and he signed up.
Then Rhetta retired the day before they departed for Oklahoma. She had been a hairstylist for 48 years and didn’t plan to retire.
“I thought I would do it until I was 100, because I loved it,” she said. “And so then he found this and I thought, ‘Oh, I could do that.’
“I retired on Thursday, and we deployed out on Friday, and I think it’s so cool to be deployed.”
She called the fire’s impact “amazing—how fires just jump around different houses. (Someone) was telling me a while ago that the family in this house said it was like a giant fireball, that it was just a ball that bounced from house to house.
“I feel so sorry for them and glad that we can be here to at least share our faith and spirit,” she said. “And my spirit’s been so blessed.”
McNabb called the volunteer response “our calling to help people in need, and it doesn’t make any difference where they are, what the situation is, we’re willing to be the hands and feet of Christ and come up and serve.
“As one of our chaplains told us the other day: ‘We’re also the voice of Christ.’ So, we get to talk to homeowners and witness to them and tell them … Christ still loves them and that things will be better.”
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