'Gut-wrenching': On the ground in the Panhandle wildfires

CANADIAN, Texas — When one of the largest wildfires in Texas history barrels through your small town of a population less than 2,300, you either lose your home or help your neighbor pick up the ashes of their own. For some, mere feet – and a whole lot of luck – made all the difference.

“By the grace of God, our house is still standing,“ Canadian resident Casey Long said, whose next-door neighbors — a family of seven — lost everything. “It’s just gut wrenching.”

An afterthought to turn on the backyard sprinklers saved his own family from sorting through rubble Wednesday morning.

“Sometimes we feel guilty. I don’t know why. It’s just like, why? Why? What happened?”

Skye Wilson wasn’t so lucky. On a somber tour through the ashes of her home, she pointed out the lost memories. Her leather business in a spare room, torched. Her seven-year-old’s bedroom, now part of the charred front yard. The family’s cash savings for a vacation to Alabama, up in smoke.

“It felt like a bad dream that I would just wake up from this morning,” Wilson said. “I looked at my best friend earlier, and she lost her house, and I was like, ‘Okay, what’s the next step?’ And then she said, ‘I don’t really know.’”

Nearly a million acres burn across the northeast Texas Panhandle as the sun sets Wednesday evening. The Smokehouse Creek fire was already a massive 200,000 acres on Tuesday afternoon when it sent Canadian residents scrambling for safety. Overnight, it more than quadrupled to the second-largest in Texas history at 850,000 acres. It is only 3% contained as of Wednesday evening.

Local officials are still assessing the full scope of damage, and even they weren’t spared from the wreckage. After a long day and night of helping his neighbors weather the blaze, the county sheriff walked through the remains of his own house.

“I’ve got my truck and my camper, two pairs of jeans,” he said, the implication; that’s enough.

While many are left without their homes, few are in desperate need. Officials are not yet asking for specific donations, explaining the outpouring of support from across the entire state has been almost overwhelming.

The time will come for more charity and repair, but until then, Canadians take comfort in the fact that all of their loved ones are alive and well.

“It’s sickening. It just breaks your heart to look at all the devastation,” Long said. “A lot of people lost a lot. And it will rebound. It’ll bring everybody together. I think God’s gonna work in mysterious ways on this deal.”

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