Weary firefighters answer dozens of calls as red-flag 'fire season' gets underway

While Ozark County mourns the terrible aftermath of Friday night’s deadly tornado, the county’s weary volunteer firefighters continue to respond to almost daily calls for help during what many call “fire season.”     

“The area continues to be in a red flag status – all outdoor fires have a very high probability for a loss of control and will spread very rapidly,” the Theodosia Area Volunteer Fire Department posted March 12 on its Facebook page, noting that “over the past 48 hrs the TAVFD has been dispatched to 8 brush, wildland and rekindled fires.”

Fire season, the TAVFD post said, usually extends from mid-March through the end of April. Because of typically low humidity and unpredictable winds during this time, “Something as simple as an ember from a trash barrel can and will result in a wildland fire. Please, no burning.”

Still, some area residents have chosen to challenge the odds, hoping the winds won’t pick up and the humidity will rise. Some have managed to keep their landscape-clearing fires contained. Others weren’t so lucky. 

Sometimes fires just seem to burn without anyone knowing how they started.  

In the 10-day stretch between Friday, March 7, and 6 p.m. Monday, March 17, Ozark County Sheriff’s Office dispatchers handled 67 calls that resulted in one or more volunteer fire departments being dispatched somewhere in the county for a fire. The highest number of calls came in on Tuesday, March 11, and on Friday, March 14, when firefighters responded to 11 fire calls each day.

 Those numbers don’t include the additional calls that sent fire department volunteers as first responders to accident scenes and medical emergencies. They also don’t include the calls when residents showed the courtesy of notifying the sheriff’s office that they were doing controlled burns and no firefighters were dispatched – unless the controlled fire became an uncontrolled blaze.

Fire departments sometimes ask the Missouri Department of Conservation for assistance when wildfires are large and fast-spreading. MDC assistance usually means bringing a bulldozer to the wildfire to create a fire break. Between March 10 and March 17, MDC was asked to assist with firefighting efforts seven times by Ozark County fire departments: by Brixey-Rockbridge, Timber Knob and Caney Mountain on March 11; by Bakersfield, Timber Knob and Thornfield on March 14; and by Brixey-Rockbridge on March 17. 

With conditions so hazardous, some residents – and fire departments – have asked the Ozark County Commissioners to issue a burn ban. The commissioners have replied that they are not legally empowered to issue or enforce a burn ban. Only the state fire marshal can issue a county burn ban, and that hasn’t happened. 

Fighting fires . . . and arguing with a resident

This week’s sheriff’s report shows that, in some instances, fires were reported by neighbors and passers-by, and when firefighters responded, the property owners said it was a controlled burn. In a few of those cases, when conditions were threatening, property owners allowed the firefighters to put out their “controlled burns” when the firefighters thought the fire could easily get out of control. 

Not all residents were cooperative, however. Timber Knob VFD Chief Nancy Winslow had a confrontation with one elderly resident who was setting what he called “back burns” in an attempt to slow a 70-acre fire the TKVFD had been fighting for several hours. “It wasn’t even his property,” Winslow said. “I told him to put it [the backfire] out because it was heading toward one of our firefighter’s houses.” 

The 86-year-old argued with the chief, who put out the fire and then notified the sheriff’s office of the confrontation. 

Timber Knob VFD’s biggest fire of the past week occurred near County Road 809 on Friday when a tree fell onto a power line and “busted off the top of the pole and caught fire,” Winslow said. “We got called out when a guy came running out of the woods saying it was 200 acres.” 

Winslow immediately asked the sheriff’s department to call MDC for assistance. She also asked for mutual aid from the county’s other departments, and firefighters rushed in from Bakersfield, Brixey-Rockbridge, Caney Mountain, Gainesville, Lick Creek, Pontiac-Price Place, Theodosia and Wasola, plus Squires VFD in Douglas County and Oakland VFD in Arkansas. Ozark County’s Road & Bridge Department and White River Valley Electric Cooperative personnel also responded.

Notice of the 200-acre fire on County Road 809 was emailed to the sheriff’s department at 2:57 p.m. Friday, and several of the other VFDs came to help Timber Knob VFD after fighting fires or responding to emergency calls in their own areas earlier in the day. Some of the mutual aid departments had to leave the Timber Knob fire to respond to calls back in their own districts.

Most of the firefighters had left, or “cleared,” the Timber Knob fire scene by 8:30 p.m. Winslow said she was there until about 10 p.m. Timber Knob VFD has only four active firefighters. “There’s not very many of us, but each one is powerful,” she said. Her mother, retired VFD chief Ruby Winslow, drove one of the Timber Knob trucks to the fire, she said.  

Proving the truth of ‘Bakersfield Strong’

While all Ozark County firefighters already feel exhausted in these early days of fire season, Bakersfield’s firefighters have faced the toughest challenges. 

BVFD provided mutual aid to Timber Knob Friday afternoon after fighting a Bakersfield-area brush fire that was called in at 1:56 p.m. that day. It was a big fire, with Tecumseh, Caulfield and Cloud 9 Ranch VFDs responding in mutual aid, along with Gamaliel and Viola, Arkansas VFDs and MDC personnel with the bulldozer. 

This blaze came just two weeks after an enormous wildfire near Bakersfield had burned several structures and more than 400 acres of land. Greg Watts, BVFD chief for 32 years, told the Times after that fire, “It’s the most scared I’ve ever been for the town of Bakersfield.” (See related story in the March 5 edition of the Times.) 

But then came March 14. On that Friday evening, the Bakersfield firefighters who responded in mutual aid to the Timber Knob fire would barely have time to get back home before responding to the death and destruction left by the powerful tornado that blew through their town shortly before 9 p.m. (See related story, page 1.)

The fires that refused to die

Some Ozark County fire departments fought the same fire more than once. In the Isabella-Theodosia area around 4:15 p.m. Tuesday, March 11, multiple callers reported a fire on both sides of Highway 160 between HH Highway at Isabella and the Theodosia bridge over Bull Shoals Lake. Theodosia Area VFD Chief John Lubbers and his department’s personnel responded, with mutual aid from Thornfield VFD.

Ninety minutes later, a fire was reported a few miles east, near County Road 829 and Highway 160, when a pole supporting electrical lines caught fire. Pontiac-Price Place VFD responded in mutual aid. 

Then, at 6:48 a.m. Wednesday, March 12, another fire broke out along Highway 160 on the east side of the Theodosia bridge, and around noon TAVFD was dispatched back to County Road 829 – about an hour before they were called back to the site at the east end of the bridge, which had rekindled.  

In the next few days, TAVFD would be called back to the same two fire sites three times when the fires rekindled. 

Other departments, including Pontiac-Price Place, Thornfield, Timber Knob, Wasola and Gainesville, responded in mutual aid to some or all of the rekindled blazes. Lubbers estimated that one of the sites was about 75 acres, “and the second one was bigger.”

The fire near County Road 829 was “back in the woods” in an area that was inaccessible to their vehicles, Lubbers said, so it was impossible to put water on the blaze. “We had to fight on foot with rakes and blowers, trying to make a fire line,” he said.  

Dr. Aaron Newton, a TAVFD firefighter who responded to all of the calls at the two sites each time they rekindled, explained that firefighters use rakes and blowers to “blow all the leaves out of the way about four feet in front of the fire, and that takes away the fuel source. The fire will burn up to the edge of that fire break and then die out,” he said.

He suspects the fires rekindled because of all the “old, dead trees that had caught fire. Some are still standing and are still on fire inside. If all we have is blowers, we don’t have a way to put that fire out. Then, when the wind picks up, they start blowing embers everywhere,” he said.

The CR 829 fire was in very rugged terrain a quarter to half mile from where they left their vehicles. “The hills are pretty steep. . . . You’re climbing over trees and going through the briars. . . . And of course you’ve got this backpack leaf blower on your back.” 

On one of their trips back to the site when it rekindled yet again, “it was very dark and extremely rocky, and we’re tripping over the rocks and going through the brush. We had flashlights, but it was about eleven o’clock, and we still hadn’t gotten the fire out,” he said. 

Newton, who’s almost 65 and still practices medicine one day a week at the Theodosia Family Medical Clinic, said he “fell a couple of times” but wasn’t badly hurt.

The other stubbornly rekindling fire site, closer to the Theodosia bridge, wasn’t as steep and rocky, and they were able to use water on that fire. But it still wasn’t easy. “I think we had 200 to 250 feet of inch-and-a-half [diameter] fire hose stretched out into those woods. Dragging that hose isn’t fun either,” he said. 

‘We’re all volunteers’

Like all Ozark County VFDs, Theodosia Area VFD depends on residents’ membership dues, donations and occasional grants. Only about a third of the Theodosia area residents served by the TAVFD pay their $65 annual dues ($90 a year for businesses), Lubbers said. 

It would cost more than that to fill the fuel tank on some of their vehicles. 

“We’re only getting one-third of the people’s dues now. If we had that other two-thirds, it would be such a big help. We could go after grants [which usually require some level of matching funds] and get better equipment,” he said. 

It might even let the department replace its oldest vehicles, which date from the 1980s.

The Theodosia Area VFD has seven active volunteers, Lubbers said, and like all of Ozark County’s VFDs, it needs more. TAVFD “needs people all over, not just the ones on the front line,” he said. “We need people who can clean equipment, drive a truck or be a first responder. Or if they just want to come in and sweep the station out – we need all kinds of help.” (Call Lubbers at 417-989-9026 for more information.)

The thing he wants people to understand is this: “We’re all volunteers. There’s no money for us in this. We’re there to help, to take care of people.”

Theodosia resident Connie Smiley, who lives in one of the houses east of the Theodosia bridge that could have been threatened if that stubbornly rekindling fire had gotten out of hand, appreciates those firefighters. “They worked so hard here, and they stayed late,” she told the Times Monday. “I’m so grateful for those guys.”