‘Pretty wild and worrisome:’ Locals react to fire at North Texas’ Possum Kingdom Lake
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Texas wildfires
Record heat and drought conditions are the perfect storm for wildfires like Possum Kingdom and Chalk Mountain that have burned 575,000 acres across the state.
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‘Pretty wild and worrisome:’ Locals react to fire at North Texas’ Possum Kingdom Lake
The sky was deceptively clear over Possum Kingdom Lake on Wednesday morning, the surrounding hillsides dotted with green trees.
On the west side of the lake a hill stands out from the rest — a barren wasteland strewn with charred, leafless trees.
Close to the shoreline, firefighters dig through the rubble of what used to be a house. Two blackened stone columns in front and a brick chimney on a concrete slab are about all that remain.
A few yards away stands another chimney and a heap of corrugated metal. The scorched hull of a jet ski lies in the yard.
The intense heat radiating from this part of the lake, known by the locals as Lakeshore Cove, is a reminder that the 1148 Fire at Possum Kingdom Lake is still active in Palo Pinto County, about 80 miles west of Fort Worth.
The fire, which began as a 30-acre wildfire around noon on Monday, has destroyed five homes and five outbuildings and burned through approximately 500 acres, according to Texas A&M Forest Service public information officer Adam Turner.
“That initial response included a lot of aircraft because it really was so hot,” Turner said. “It was incredibly dangerous for us to actually get close to the fire.”
Turner said officials still don’t know what caused the fire.
As bad as the damage looks, locals say this fire is not nearly as destructive as the PK Complex Fire of April 2011. That one burned at least 167 homes, two churches and 125,000 acres.
“We didn’t lose nothing this time,” said Duaine Cook, a lifelong resident of the Possum Kingdom area. “Last time me and my dad lost eight [rental] houses.”
Cook lives about 10 miles away from Lakeshore Cove, but he could see the smoke and flames from his house. He hopped on his Sea-Doo jet ski and came over right away to check on some houses that he had helped build.
“No problems, thank goodness,” he said. “All this burnt last time.”
Cody Harper, an employee of the boat rental company The Dock, headed out on the lake about 30 minutes after the fire began to see if anyone needed help evacuating.
“The first thing you couldn’t miss was the large balls of flame,” Harper said. “It was working its way up the mountains and around the hillsides. And the smoke was so thick that when the water planes fly around, you couldn’t see them anymore the smoke was so black and so thick. Occasionally you’d hear a boom from I guess a propane tank or a transformer. It was never ending. It just kept climbing that hill.”
Harper wasn’t on the water very long before a game warden told him to leave.
“They wanted everyone to get away from it as far as possible,” he said.
Sonja Elledge owns a lake house that’s about a 20-minute boat ride from the affected area. She was in town for lunch when the fire started and was on her way home when she saw the smoke.
“It was pretty wild and worrisome,” Elledge said. “And actually, with me being so far away from it, we still had ash falling on our house, and that’s why I thought originally that the fire was a lot closer.”
The fire was about 50% contained as of Friday. Turner said mornings have been fairly calm, but as the temperature increases in the afternoon, so does the fire activity.
“It is very hot and very dry,” Turner said. “As the conditions worsen, we are starting to see more fire activity pick up, more flames appearing and that’s really what we’re trying to avoid.”
On Thursday, Texas A&M Forest Service firefighters responded to 11 new wildfires statewide that burned approximately 1,060 acres, while suppression efforts continued on previous fires.
A second wildfire that started later in the week in Palo Pinto County, called the Long Horn Fire, was 18.6 acres and 80% contained Friday. The largest fire in the region, the Chalk Mountain Fire in Somervell County near Glen Rose, was estimated at 6,705 acres and still only 10% contained as of Friday. Gov. Greg Abbott is scheduled to visit Glen Rose on Saturday for a briefing.
As the firefighters work to keep the Possum Kingdom fire contained, Gary Cox and Wendy Fancher, co-owners of Hatchet House BBQue in Graford are working to keep them fed and supplied with basics like water and Gatorade.
The restaurant is normally closed Mondays and Tuesdays, but as soon as they heard about the fire, Fancher got on social media to request donations and Cox headed to the restaurant to see how he could help.
“The community was awesome,” Cox said. “...Before I could even get here there was already Gatorade, water, I mean already supplies sitting here waiting for me to deliver them.”
Cox said the donations keep coming in, even from as far away as Dallas and Fort Worth.
Cox prepared lunch and supper for the firefighters Tuesday, and Harper and Blake Kelly, the general manager of The Dock, shuttled the food across the lake by boat.
Cox had the chance to make a delivery Tuesday night, and he said it was sobering to see how “beat down” the firefighters were after working long hours in extreme temperatures.
“It was the little things that they cherished the most,” he said. “Lip balm, eye drops. It was eye opening for sure.”
Turner, the public information officer for the forest service, said things are improving every day, but he can’t predict how soon the fire will be 100% contained.
“We’ll be out here until we feel confident that it will stay in place,” he said.
This story was originally published July 21, 2022 at 7:57 AM.
