Resilience and humanity emerge in the aftereffects of the worst wildfire in Texas history.
Story by Crystal Albers
Video by Grant Company
Looking down, Lauren Perez did not recognize her own hands. The ash that now blackened them was interrupted only by a few smears of blood.
A heavy, acidic smell of death pervaded the air and deepened the empty sensation in her stomach. Everything she and her husband, Drew, had worked for during the last five years seemed no more tangible now than the smoke evaporating from the remnants of a nearby smoldering yucca.
No one seems to know the exact death count from the blazes during that unseasonably warm late February.
Some reports estimate more than 10,000 head of cattle died from the Smokehouse Creek Wildfire that ravaged the Texas Panhandle and parts of western Oklahoma earlier this year, with lingering damage expected for years.
The firestorm began Monday, Feb. 26, in Roberts County and burned white hot for nearly three weeks, destroying everything in its 1.2-million-acre race across the plains. As relentless winds and smoke choked the sun from the sky in the fire’s initial days, survival became the sole focus of those near Canadian, whose worst nightmares turned to reality by Tuesday.
For many, hell on Earth was dawning.
An instant
Twenty miles south of Amarillo, Drew Perez started his day like most, paying extra attention to the weather. A day-old fire, reportedly caused by downed powerlines near Stinnett, was gaining dangerous speed fueled by high winds and uncharacteristically abundant grasses, but it wasn’t an eminent threat to the couple’s herd.
He and Lauren kept a vigilant watch on the alerts peppering their phones. It seemed a normal, albeit watchful, day at the cattle feeding operation in Amarillo, where Drew worked when he wasn’t overseeing the couple’s Running P Cattle Company.
The Perezes started their registered Hereford and Angus ranch in 2019 with seven head of Hereford cattle and little more than an aluminum stock trailer.
A fourth-generation rancher with cattle roots in New Mexico, Drew had settled in Canyon with Lauren, whose ranching heritage stretched to Kansas.
The heart of cattle-feeding country was the perfect place for the couple to raise their young children, Mila and Myles, while pursuing their hard-earned dream of building a ranch with the help of off-farm income and long hours. It was paying off, too. Their herd had grown to 110 head, split between Canyon and leased pasture near Canadian.
“We had gone through fire before, and so we were just monitoring it closely,” Lauren says. The fire, which started 80 miles west of their Canadian-based herd, hadn’t seemed a significant threat at the time. Then the winds changed.
“I called Drew and said, ‘You got to go. You got to go,’” Lauren recalls.
It was Tuesday, Feb. 27. The family’s recipient cows were due to calve March 1.
Consumed
About the time Drew Perez raced northward, Haley Clark-Esters reached for her phone to call her neighbor for help. Fire had reignited that morning just as the water trailer pump sputtered to a halt.
It was 8:30 a.m., and Haley, with her husband, David, and father, William, had spent the previous 12 hours battling the wall of flames threatening to destroy her parents’ 7 Bar Ranch 40 miles southwest of Canadian, near Miami.
The 125-head commercial cow-calf ranch where William and his wife, Jackie, lived has been in the Clark family since 1960. Haley and David had recently moved back to the area to be closer to her parents, now in their 80s, after spending years living and working in the Fort Worth area.
Haley was returning from Amarillo with her mother Monday afternoon when they spotted smoke on the western horizon.
By nightfall, the flames had arrived.
William had already hitched a 1,100-gallon water tank outfitted with a two-inch hose to the back of the truck in an effort to slow the fire’s advance. As Haley drove alongside the fire line, David sprayed water at the flames that roared increasingly closer to the homestead.
“The fire was blowing west to east at the time. We were just trying to save as much of the land as we could,” Haley recalls. “David was on the back of the feed pickup spraying water as I was pulling the water wagon.”
As they went, bawling from the neighbor’s cows pierced through the crackling flames.
“That was the most haunting sound,” she says. “We opened up as many gates as possible as we went along, trying to give them a way out and spraying as much as we could until the water ran out.”
With each pass, the two refilled at the 50,000-gallon water tanks William had installed years ago north of the home. A 2006 wildfire had also convinced him to maintain a 30-foot strip of shorter grass around the perimeter of the headquarters to serve as a natural fire break.
The firefight continued until they neared the caprocks, where the pasture breaks into the northern fringes of a 200-mile escarpment carved by time and water and frames the eastern edge of the Llano Estacado, or Southern High Plains. A wrong turn with limited visibility could mean a 100-foot drop.
“We had to get Dad to lead us through parts of it where it breaks off because I didn’t know the pasture well enough in the dark to know where the breaks were,” Haley says. “The wind was howling and it just wouldn’t stop. [The fire] kept creeping south the entire time in the wind. It just wouldn’t stop.”
The fire raged through the night and slowed by early Tuesday morning before hot spots reignited on the western front. Thankfully, a neighbor arrived with a new pump.
“We were still getting cattle drawn in to shorter grass by morning, but it was calving season and a lot of them didn’t want to come in because their babies were still out there,” she says.
The fire chief arrived to inform the family that all local forces were moving to protect the town and encouraged them to leave. The Clarks, however, chose to stay. Jackie was already safe in town, and the three had positioned themselves to fight the wind change.
As the fire shifted, Haley prayed in earnest.
“Being from a ranch, you want to protect those cows,” she explains. “You’re all they’ve got.”
The impossible
Texas & Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association Special Ranger Ben Eggleston responded to a call from Hemphill County Sheriff Brent Clapp that Tuesday morning.
The fire was crossing from Roberts into Hemphill County, headed toward Canadian, the county seat and home to its law enforcement center and Eggleston’s office.
“He asked me to go up and down [Highway] 83 and start evacuating, telling people to leave their residences,” Eggleston says. “We opened up fences. We let cattle out because you could see there was no stopping the fire.”
As Eggleston returned to town, the fire, powered by the estimated 60-70-mile-per-hour winds, jumped the South Canadian River and blocked the last remaining exit to the south. Canadian was suddenly an island.
“The fire was coming from the west, and it was as high as the sky. Everything was a red glow,” Eggleston recalls. “You could see the flames, but long before the flames ever got somewhere, the fire was being pushed. It was like it exploded and caught the grass on fire ahead of it, whatever was in its path.
“I’ve never seen a fire burn like that.”
South of Canadian, Drew Perez turned his truck eastward. He was nearing his pasture but stopped to get an update from emergency personnel in two fire trucks parked along the highway. One asked where he was going.
“I said, ‘Well, my cows are down this road,’” Drew says. “He looked at me and said, ‘You’ve got about 30 minutes before you need to start getting out of here.’”
The next half hour was a blur of last-ditch efforts, Drew recalls. With no time to haul cattle to safety, he placed feed in spots that perhaps offered the
best chances of survival. Caliche ground at the southern portion of the pasture provided a safe haven, he hoped.
“It’s tough to think of what you’re supposed to do in those situations when you’ve got three days’ worth of work to do in 30 minutes,” he says. “We just tried to do what we could and put it into God’s hands.
“I was very concerned about the cows, but I’ve got a 7- and a 5-year-old at home. I knew we could build back and the grass would grow back, but I hated to do it. I hated to leave the cows there,” he says. “That was a hard decision to make at the time, but I didn’t really have a choice.”
Resigned to a sleepless night, Drew made the long drive home and braced for the worst.
Miracles
Lauren Perez describes the scene Wednesday morning as sheer devastation.
“All you saw was burned ground for miles and miles,” she says of the drive to Canadian. “They say the fire was moving at the rate of two football fields per second.”
Later images showed the Smokehouse Creek Wildfire covered 850,000 acres, or 1,328 square miles, within its first two days.
“Nearly all of our registered Hereford herd, which is where we put our primary focus, was wiped out in a matter of seconds. We lost 42 head,” she says. “It was the majority of everything that we had spent our time growing. All of our donors were basically gone, leaving us with a few yearling heifers, and about 50% of our total herd numbers.”
Entire bloodlines had vanished in the flames, and many of the animals that survived laid suffering.
“We went out to each cow on the Ranger with some friends of ours who were there to help. They carried a pistol,” Lauren remembers, with tears.
“The hurt and the suffering of those mama cows, so many in the worst state — we had to do what was best for them, but it was a lot to take for all of us. I mean, our neighbors and friends had to put someone else’s cattle down. I just had to turn my back and walk away.”
The charred skin of the dead and living alike made identification nearly impossible.
“You couldn’t tell which cattle were whose. One cow that was still alive had been caught in the cattle guard and was so badly burned that we couldn’t tell that she was a Hereford, let alone ours,” Lauren says. “Everyone had passed her several times. Drew said he didn’t want to mistakenly put someone else’s cow down, but then we started going through the inventory and it was O23H. It was one of our foundation cows.”
Of the cows that survived, most were badly burned and due to calve that day. Drew contacted more neighbors to find trailers to move cows back to Canyon. Soon, they had more trailers available than cows.
And then, there were miracles — flickers of hope.
“We knew some cows had calved right before the fire got there because we could tell by looking at them, but we couldn’t find all their calves,” Drew recalls. “We were fortunate enough to find a few that were lying on the ashes when we got there.
“There’s one bull calf that we found completely unharmed, sitting on a patch of grass the size of a lick tub. For 60 miles on either side of it, everything was burned, except for this little patch with a little calf. We named him Fireball.”
At 7 Bar Ranch, the Clark family lost five cows and seven calves but managed to save the rest of their herd, along with about 45 acres of grassland, the house and sheds. The fire had edged within 150 yards of the house in some spots, Haley estimates.
“We had a lot of calves that couldn’t nurse because their udders were burned, but we were lucky compared to our neighbors west of us,” Haley says.
In Canadian, Eggleston helped other first responders ensure people were safe. Two fatalities were reported elsewhere in the county, but the town’s residents had managed to weather the firestorm that left the surrounding land in steaming ruins.
“Driving down the roads and looking across the country, you could see massive amounts of livestock lost,” he says. “Cattle were lying everywhere, fences were gone, and the cattle that did survive were walking astray — the walking wounded I called them.
“I had seen devastation before,” says the 20-year special ranger veteran, “but not on the scale of this fire.”
Eggleston had lost his own pastureland and fences near Ellis County, but his brother had managed to move his cattle before the fire. His family, thankfully, was safe.
It was time to rebuild.
Help and healing
“We were overwhelmed with volunteers after the fire. They came from everywhere. They had meals on the streets in Canadian and other small towns,” Eggleston recalls. “School-age kids were even helping at the feed points and hay delivery stations, just helping people with everything from feed to clothing. It’s good to see when people are down that help comes in their time of need.”
Photo by Crystal Albers.
Ranch relief was in full swing. Hay, feed and supplies were collected and distributed across the region.
“We had people calling who didn’t even know us, hoping to help,” Haley says. “And the outpouring of prayer was everything to us. Prayer is what got us through this.”
“People were willing to give you the shirts off their backs,” Drew echoes. “People we didn’t even know just showed up. They didn’t even tell us they were coming. They showed up and started unloading.
“It’s hard for ranchers to ask for help, but the volunteers who showed up didn’t hesitate. It just lets you know you’re going to be all right.”
In addition to widespread support by Texas & Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association Special Rangers, the association initiated fundraising through its TSCRA Disaster Relief Fund to aid the hundreds of ranchers affected through the Texas Panhandle and western Oklahoma. The effort spurred more than $2.5 million from nearly 2,000 donors.
The nonprofit supports Texas and Oklahoma cattle raisers facing disasters, distributing monetary assistance to reduce financial burdens. In the case of the Panhandle wildfires, funding was also available for volunteer fire departments working alongside the affected families.
7 Bar Ranch and Running P Cattle Company were among those ranches awarded funds to assist in recovery. Haley says the Clark family will use the money to help rebuild 23 miles of lost fence.
“I don’t know if I have the words for my appreciation for how much it means to be able to help Mom and Dad and get this place back up,” she says. “Thanks to TSCRA, we’re going to rebuild again and keep after it.
“The recovery from this fire will take years. We’re still dealing with the ramifications of it, including the loss of several cows and calves from respiratory complications caused by the smoke.”
For many like the Clarks, time is revealing the true extent of additional hidden damages, from lingering illnesses and respiratory problems in cattle, to damage to metal barns and equipment destined for rust and deterioration.
Before the fire, the Perez family had plans to host their first production sale. Drew says the TSCRA Disaster Relief Fund will make the goal a reality, helping Running P invest in rebuilding the cow herd.
“‘Thank you’ is not enough,” he says. “Instead of a five-year plan, maybe we can make that a two-year plan to get that back up and running. Hopefully it shortens the window of what it will take to get us back to that point.”
The Perezes purchased pregnant recips that carried matings and reinitiated extensive embryo transfer work from the cows that survived into cooperator herds in Oklahoma.
There was a point, though, where it didn’t seem possible, Lauren admits.
“We put our heart and soul into this, and I’d be lying if I said we didn’t consider getting out after the fire,” she says. “But really, it was the people that came together and said, ‘We’re here for you in your darkest days,’ who gave us that light and that hope to summon our grit and resilience. It was because of the hope that TSCRA has given us that we know we can do this again. They stood us back up on our feet.”
A new day
Six months after the Smokehouse Creek Wildfire, the grass is nearly regrown and new fences show signs of promise.
On a hot August morning, the Perez family prepares to work their weaned Hereford calves — the ones that survived the inferno. For Lauren and Drew, the calves and their fresh hot-iron brands offer a symbol of hope.
“The calves we’ll work today survived through the fire. Certain bloodlines — like grandma, mom, daughter — they’re all gone,” Drew says. “When you go through the genetics of the ones that did survive, though, it’s like God was watching over us. He kept the best ones. They’re going to be the building blocks for the future.”
Lauren reflects on the weeks following the fire, nursing calves and mamas back to health, rubbing balm on udders and bottle feeding for months.
“As soon as we got the cows back to Canyon they started calving, and the kids would light up to go out and check pastures. Seeing the excitement in their eyes when the new baby calves arrived gave us the hope and reassurance that this is why we do this,” she says. “Those miracles kept us rolling.”
Nodding toward his kids eager to help with morning chores, Drew says, “It’s their choice if they would like to pursue this and go that route in the future. They’ll just need to keep their faith strong, stay positive and know the rain comes back. The grass grows back, and the sun’s coming up tomorrow. And it did.”
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Crystal Albers is a writer and the chief operating officer at Grant Company based in St. Joseph, Missouri.
This story first appeared in the December 2024 issue of The Cattleman magazine.
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