Forged in flames: An oral history of the Labor Day wildfires

0:00Wildfire has touched most parts of Texas, but the destruction one weekend in 2011 remains unprecedented, remembering the Labor Day wildfires today on the Texas Standard. Texas Standard is a production of KUT Austin, KERA North Texas, Houston Public Media, and Texas Public Radio in San Antonio. I'm Laura Rice, and this special edition of the Texas Standard will revisit an oral history collected by our home station KUT in the months after the 2011 Central Texas Wildfires. It's been 15 years since that outbreak of blazes caused the skies to darken over the Austin area. So we had firefighters in trouble and we had civilians in trouble. We were trying to get everybody out and I could not get back across the pertin house bridge because the smoke was so thick we couldn't see anything. So we couldn't even find the fire to fire at that point. Revisiting forged inflames in oral history of the Labor Day wildfires today on the Texas Standard.

1:00From the panhandle to the pines of East Texas, the far west to the RGB, Texas is no stranger to wildfire. It's the Texas Standard for Monday, September 7th, Labor Day. I'm Laura Rice. The holiday marks 15 years since the most destructive wildfire in recorded Texas history, measured not by acres burned but by homes lost. The Bastrop County complex fire was just one of more than 30,000 that ignited in 2011 by far the worst year since the Texas Anemforced Service has been keeping track. It was spurred by an unprecedented one year drought. It had been hot and dry all that summer but Sunday, September 4th, would be the start of something different for Central Texas. It would displace families, destroy homes and livelihoods, test the metal of hundreds of first responders and eventually redraw and rewrite the stories of thousands of lives.

2:11The first sign that that day was different came at 10.59 am. We're gonna never want to get a quick fire in that supply. Stand the line, don't hang up, it's a real bad fire. Today on the Texas Standard, we're revisiting the stories of the Labor Day wildfires collected by our home station KUT in the months after the 2011 fire outbreak in Central Texas. The voice you'll hear next is KUT Special Projects Editor Matt Largie. This is forged in flames and oral history of the Labor Day wildfires. I'm standing near Mansfield Dam in 620 here on the morning of September 4th, 2011, a spark ignited and a historic battle got underway. For months and months before this, the state had suffered intense heat with little or no rain. Central Texas was at the epicenter and nearing the peak of the state's worst single year drought in history.

3:15Lakes were less than half full, grass, brown and dry, green belts littered with dead and dying trees, their droppings crackling under foot. In nearby Ranch Land, cattle were starving, ranchers were selling up, farmers filing for disaster. But that morning, the seemingly endless heat wave was about to break. A dry cool front was swooping in with gusty winds from the north. Tropical storm Lee had turned ashore to the south the night before. Some still held out hope it might spare a little rain for Central Texas. But at the last, it veered too far east and instead brought more wind. By mid-morning, those winds were kicking up, flags flying stiffly at attention for the first time in weeks. Trees were swaying, branches were snapping, power lines were dancing. What you're about to hear are the stories of September 4th, 2011, and the days that followed. What you're about to hear are first hand accounts from people who were there, people willing to share their stories, their memories, their tragedies and their triumphs.

4:24Of how they lived through and overcame one of the most devastating events in Texas history. These are just a sampling of the hundreds of hours of interviews collected for this oral history of the Labor Day wildfires. My name is Mike Wykoff and I'm the senior pastor at St. Luke's on the Lake. On Sunday morning, of course, we have our services and a member of the choir who is a retired fireman said to me, I'm a father Mike, this is going to be a really dangerous day. And I asked him why. He said because of the winds being so high and the temperature and all of the factors. And I thought about that all day. My name is Greg Lawson. I work for the Travis County Sheriff's Office as a deputy. That morning, my wife and I were out. I think we went out to breakfast and I had to be at work at three. I remember on our way back, I told her I said, you see these winds. All it's going to take is one spark and all of this is going to go.

5:30My name is Ken Campbell and I'm a assistant chief at C-Bar Fire Department in Western Travis County. And I'm also a volunteer with West Lake Fire Department where I'm a lieutenant. And I was actually off that day with my boys out in Mason County on the land on River. And I always carry my radio with me and we were coming back to granite shows. I was starting to get pages about a fire in Flugerville and saw that we were doing a mutual aid to Flugerville. Around one, we started getting busy, like the lakes started getting populated, our calls started coming in, EMS calls and stuff like that. I'm Jeremy Peterson, I'm a lieutenant with Lake Travis Fire Rescue Acting Battalion Chief. I was actually jumping on some calls with some of my guys at the stations and responding there. And we went actually down Comanche Trail to kind of Bob Wins Point area or Windy Point. We cleared that call, we turned around and the engine I was with and myself we saw a big old column of black smoke and I'm like, that's not a just a normal control burn.

6:38Once I got home, I changed, got in my car. I was in my car for, I don't know, 10, 15 minutes when the first call came out. Travis County 911, do you need police, fire or ambulance? I want to put a fire on 620. Is that manfield, ma'am? Yes, we're getting multiple calls and we do have the police and the fire department in route. That's how it kind of all started. By the time I got on scene, I'd already jumped over 620 and was kind of in that valley there. I'm Robert Abbott, assistant fire chief, Lake Travis fire rescue. At that point it was a small fire that had jumped the road. He called me to give me an update of what they had and at that point I prepared to come in. I'm Cynthia Costa. We've been planning our wedding for two years. We were engaged for a long time and we selected September 4th, 2011 as our wedding date.

7:38A venue called Star Hill Ranch. I think in a course of 30 minutes from the time I got the phone call that he was on an incident to the second phone call got from him saying he was upgrading the alarms. I was headed to headquarters but I couldn't get there because 620 was blocked off at the fire. So it was kind of like out of a movie. You know you roll up and you see smoke everywhere and then you see flames that are probably 60 feet in the air and it's just in a distance all you see is a neighborhood. There's no way we're going to stop it on foot. You know we can't get in front of it. It's in the hills. It's in that valley. It was chaos. I had a wedding coordinator to take care of all of the stressful stuff on the day of the wedding. So she comes up to me. A couple of hours before the wedding as I was putting my wedding dress on and she said, oh you might want to hold off for a second. No big deal. We're just going to delay the start of the wedding. There's some sort of like traffic or something.

8:38Something's going, I don't know. We're just going to hold off. I'm Nishel Bielinsky and I live in Stina Ranch. We smell the smoke and the wind was blowing and we have a topiary earn that's on the front porch. It fell over. So my brother-in-law went to go pick it up. Came back in the house and said I smell and I see a lot of smoke across 620. And that's when we saw it. That's one of the wider parts of 620. For a fire in central Texas to jump a road like that, that quick is a sign of a pretty serious fire. I am Jim Lennardo, son of the fire chief at Lake Travis Fire Rescue. The bottom line was we knew from the beginning it was going into Stina Ranch and we knew it was going to be a bad scenario. And from there we started to develop a very large game plan if you will on what was going to happen if this fire hit the backside of Stina Ranch which in fact it did.

9:38I didn't notice until the reception that some of my family that was coming in from Dallas wasn't there and of course I was really upset at my cousin because she promised she'd be there for my wedding and how rude is that. And it's a Sunday and it's in the Liberty weekend. So I could she not make it. One of my husband's co-workers showed him off in the distance like do you see that smoke? That smoke is the fires like everything's on fire around here. Did you guys not know that? So when we went to the end of the Green Belt my husband and I walked over with my daughter and we looked over and my husband said if that fire jumps we have 30 minutes to get out of this neighborhood. And while we were standing there it jumped. I'm on one you need to place fire. I've got to get you guys got to get a fire truck. I'm in the Dina River way. Okay sir calm down this is a second I mean it's firepower not mine.

10:41There we have several fires working we're doing the best we can. Oh my God. Dina River way. There's got to be a house and go. Okay the flames are right next to the house. I never did get to go back in the house. Before we left you know I went and knocked on my neighbor's door. I left a message I got a business signal in another place and the wind and the smoke started to arrive. And so it started to become harder to breathe and I was starting to go back to my neighbor's house and the policeman turned me around and told me to get in the car. We got in the car and I was sobbing all the way to HB which was the gathering point for the neighborhood an unofficial gathering point because we really didn't know where to go. I was starting to hear how the resources were being moved around and in fact some of the like Travis guys who were going out to Fluegerville were not having to turn around and come back.

11:43About that time I started toning out for Perdinales for a brush fire there. Travis County 911 do you need police fire or ambulance? We're going to need fire. We can see smoke off a penny plant road. I don't know what's up to this. I know it's somewhere by on Hayney Plant Road somewhere. This is forged in flames an oral history of the Central Texas wildfires of 2011. Texas standards home station KUT collected hundreds of hours of interviews in the months after what became known as the Labor Day Wildfires. This year marks 15 since that outbreak of blazes so we're revisiting the stories. 2011 was unique in the sheer number of fires that popped up across the state. More on what that looked like in Central Texas still ahead.

12:49Support for Texas Standard comes from Baron Adler Cluffinotto, a Texas eminent domain and condemnation law firm helping to protect the rights of Texas property owners for more than 40 years. More at BaronAdler.com Support for Texas Standard comes from Texas Mutual Insurance Company, a Texas-based workers compensation provider committed to providing care and support for injured employees. More at TexasMutual.com slash Texans Deliver. This is a special edition of the Texas Standard. I'm Laura Rice. 2011 was by far the worst wildfire year on record in Texas history. More fires broke out and together they burned more acres and homes than seen before or since. Several of these fires started on Labor Day weekend in Central Texas.

13:52Our home station KUT collected the stories of survivors into an oral history. We revisit those stories now 15 years after the wildfires. My name is Matt Lara. I live in Spicewood, Texas, just off of a Pellface Ranch Road. I was going to town to meet some friends, walked outside in the light in the yard. The sunlight was just really strange. It was just two. There's something too orange about it like all the blue had been cut out of it. My name is Jeffrey Hall. We were going to go to a concert on 71 at Susie Fowler as a potter. She has a lot of property on the Petter Nallis River. And so the op-dowls, Chris and Debbie and Lori and I went out to Susie's house to see a concert. My name is Susie Fowler. I'm an artist and about four times a year I have a musical gathering. And so that day I had a 60 to 70 people sitting down in my house for a concert.

14:52I got a phone call while the concert was just about to start inside so I stepped outside to take it, started talking to my daughter Kyle. And as I was speaking to her I smelled smoke really strong. I called my neighbor Chris and I said, Chris, let's go check it out. So we left and went past our street to where we saw the smoke and went up toward Barton Creek Lakeside. And we saw the flames coming and the wind was strong. So we went home and we called our wives to come home. My name is Debbie Optal. I live in Spicewood, Texas. My husband and my neighbors and I had gone to a house concert that was about two miles from our home. We were there drinking wine and having a great time. And finally somebody told me I needed to answer my phone, which had been apparently ringing in my purse for quite some time. My 16 year old daughter was home alone and she could see the fires coming across the valley.

15:52And the wind was blowing about 45 miles an hour and the fires were quickly approaching our house and she was trying to get a hold of us. When I head and drove out to 71 and I see my neighbor on the right and he's kind of packing up and I saw his boat tide do his truck and I thought he's just taking the boat out. And he kind of waves and then I keep driving away about him and I drive to the corner of 71 and pell face and I see the fire and I pull over and I call him and say, hey Dave, I think there's a fire. He said, yeah, there's a big fire. You need to come home and pack up and get ready to get out of here. When something like that happens, you always think, oh, this can't really be happening. So my neighbor, Laurie and I stayed and drank wine and our husbands went to check on the fires and see how close it really was. By the time my daughter called me back, even where we were, which was a couple of miles away, Ash was starting to rain down on the home that we were in.

16:56So Laurie and I asked my daughter to come pick us up and by the time we got back to the house, the fires were right there coming up the road. We had to drive through flames to get out of our subdivision. I had my dog with me already. Just went in the house and started grabbing all the things that were really important to me. My accordions and guitar and pictures off the wall and files and all the things that I considered important loaded them up into the back of my pickup and about that time, the Sheriff's Department drove through and announced over the megaphone that there's a fire coming. They said fire is imminent. Evacuate now. I was in San Antonio. I started getting phone calls from my parents. They were in Connecticut. There's the only one for my family who could get everything we treasured out of this house.

17:56My name is Mary Matia and I'm from Spicewood, Texas. Everyone was going the opposite direction and I was driving towards this fire. I was trying to snap pictures just because I couldn't believe that this was where my house was. My house was where all this smoke was coming from. We got out of the neighborhood and my wife called me and said she saw Chris on his roof and that she found out he wasn't going to leave. But we also knew that he had lived out there in the neighborhood for, you know, 20 years or so. If anybody knew the lay of the land and how to be safe in that situation, it would be him. He knew what chance he was taking. My husband stayed to fight the fire. He hid from the authorities. And every once in a while I could see her home. It's three stories. It's got this big shed roof and I could see Chris standing up on the roof looking around trying to get a position on where the fires were coming.

18:57You could just hear it moving through the grass and the wind. It really sounded like you really can't describe. You know, almost like a roar. We could tell that that fire was close. I remember closing the door, turning around. I had the list for my mom. Everything was quiet. Then I was. I mean, it was just me. Every time I passed the windows, I'd look through. And the smoke would just be growing. And you'd see black parts and the sun started to get covered up. And everything outside became hazy and you could smell it. It was such an awesome power. Man, this is where it'll teach you. Have your have your go back ready. Have it ready to go.

19:57Because we got about five minutes before they gets over here. The wind changes. Oh God, protect this family. Keep us safe. Help us to keep our heads. And know that these things are just material. I just I won't forget that sound. It sounded like this big channel of water just flowing past me. Just constant. The constant in the distance. I was this this energy. This energy that was just exploding. I really wanted to make my parents proud. I really wanted to get everything that they wanted me to get. I didn't want to leave anything behind. And I called my mom. Mom, I'm freaking out here. I'm really trying to get this whole list. I don't know if I can the house is starting to get hot. I just don't know. I don't know anything. The TV's not working. I don't know what to do.

20:59And I remember her saying at that point, Mary, get out. And so we had firefighters in trouble and we had civilians in trouble. And we were trying to get everybody out. I could not get back across the pernallis bridge because the smoke was so thick we couldn't see anything. So we couldn't even find the fire to fight it at that point. It was so smoky that you couldn't see. You couldn't breathe. Everything your eyes were watering. It was it was insane. It was the craziest thing to be to be sitting in the middle and the sound of the fire coming on you. You have all the smoke and you know the chaos of everything and the stress. You asked me if I was scared and I said no and I don't mean that and I'm scared. You know, I mean it in the way that what we had was nothing compared to what they had in Bastrop. I mean other than the people that actually lost their houses, I don't think anybody could really even compare the two.

22:03It was already as one firefighter said one of Texas's worst days. But the greatest test of that Labor Day weekend 2011 was yet to come. This is forged in flames and oral history of the Labor Day wildfires 15 years later. This special edition of the Texas Standard continues in a moment. You're listening to a special edition of the Texas Standard. I'm Laura Rice. Today we're revisiting an oral history of the Labor Day wildfires. 15 years ago, September 4, 2011, wildfires burned across Central Texas. For days, people had been warned of a perfect storm. Suburban neighborhoods next to drought-stricken wildlands had provided the ideal tinder. Even the smallest spark could quickly burn out of control. And on this day, it had. By noon, firefighters were battling dozens of fires, large and small, from Steiner Ranch to Delhi.

23:08But nothing had prepared anyone for what came next. I noticed a shift in the air. It was very perceptible. Kind of like the barometric pressure was dropping. My name is Christy Fair and our family lived in the lost pines of Smithville, Texas. My husband was standing over the way and I said, we have in some weather. And he walked around, kind of looked up. We couldn't smell anything. There was nothing in the sky. It's clear. You know, everything was just fine. But there was something different in the air. He walked around and he came back around. And he said, I don't think this is weather. I think something's happened. Yes, your county none one. You'd fire police or ambulance. Fire, please. We have a line down and there's a fire at 258 R.L. Giving the conditions at the time and the activities around the county. I knew that if we had any sort of ignition that day, it was going to be a monster. Yes, a big fire, please. I'm going right now.

24:11My name is Mike Fisher. I'm an emergency management coordinator for Best Drop County. And in the wildfire fighting world for about 35 years now. At 220 Sunday afternoon September of the 4th, I was actually on my way back here to the office when that fire was reported. I'm back. I'm a Saturday, a fire. I need to out route for a grass fire. I'll go to a power line. Two by the charlotte, two by the charlotte. It can be residences and danger. Melissa Bishop was at home in Smithville that afternoon. It was a shock to me to come out in that afternoon and smell smoke. So that's when I drove up on the forest road and saw little shooting stars. Looking like shooting stars, falling everywhere in the woods. And I knew, well, okay, this is it.

25:11And I just took it from there. It was Sunday afternoon just getting out of church. It was exciting because this was the first game for the Texas A&M Aggies. So myself and the mayor, who's an Aggie, were getting ready to go to college station. I received a phone call saying, judge, we have fire. We want you to come down to emergency headquarters. And we're going to brief you. My name is Ronnie McDonald, a former county judge at Bass Drop County. So I was thinking maybe this was going to be a small fire. We're going to get a briefing and we're going to go into the football game. Got there. The mayor was there and we began talking and they began telling us the situation. And before I got there, I was still receiving phone calls from friends. And Ronnie, we have smokers everywhere. But I got there and the emergency management coordinator Mike Fisher began to sit down and assess the situation. What was going on? And the mayor and I looked at each other and said, well, we're not going to the game today. We understood that quickly that this was not a normal fire.

26:12This was the fire that individuals had feared for years that came upon Bass Drop County. I knew that we were going to experience a very major wildfire. My first concern was life safety. The one that the fire was in an area we call as a wild and urban interface, where we have a lot of population living in those pine trees that we're going to burn severely. My concern was, could we get everybody out of harm's way? My name is Mizzy Stroudge. I'm 45. I'm with Heart of the Pines Volunteer Fire Department, number 88-21. The alarm went off. My page went off. And I opened up the station and you know, get everybody out, get everybody ready, get everybody out. And I opened it up, not even looking at this guy. And when I turned back to go back inside, the radio was blowing up. You know, you need to have a class, you need everything you can get for us.

27:15At the fire, if you need everything you got. And when I turned around, I saw the sky for just a split second. That tropical storm Lee was blowing in and hitting Louisiana. And I thought for just a second, we were going to get some rain. The whole northern sky was just this huge build that, you know, immediately realized it. That wasn't a cloud at all. That was the fire. And it was going to be, it was going to be bad. My name is Jeanne Jessup and I live in Bastrop, Texas. My girlfriend called me up and told me that her husband had been outside working and had smoked smoke. And he had gone down the road and saw that there really was a fire. And she just wanted me to know. Previously that day, I'd been on Facebook and for some reason had... I'd just kind of attended the Bastrop County Emergency Management page, that no why. And they posted their phone number and so I saw it. And I called them and asked if there really was a fire.

28:17And they said that there was a fire and to get out now and then they hung up the phone on me. And I took that as a holy crap. This is no food one. But we were the very, very first... First people to find out about it. We lived as the crow flies more or less around a mile away from the start of the fire. Which just happened to be in another friend of ours, yard. Josh, we're abandoned in this house. It's too bad. We're getting out. These sound like brakes trying coming in here. We had basically six minutes from time we called 911 to get out. I'm Tim Risto and we lived in Circle D in Bastrop. When we were going to get our stuff a girl and came and said, there's a fire on the back of your rod and get some stuff in your family and get out.

29:20Well there was a point where we were in the house amidst the chaos of trying to get things and load up in the trucks and get out. From the boys just standing there and I realized we'd kind of been in such chaos mode running around trying to figure out what to grab. And the boys were standing there in the middle of the living room. As I came back in on one trip and I saw them there and they were looking out and I realized they could see out the back windows of the house for the first time. Flames there in the distance. You could see the smoke starting to rise. And I just saw them kind of glazed. I had staring at it. And I realized that was their first view of the reality of it. And they started to break down a little bit and cry and kneel down next to him, put my arm around him and said, you know, we're going to be all right. God is with us and we're going to be fine through this. Just get some toys that you want. Head out to the truck, load stuff up.

30:20We'll meet there and we'll get out. And you know what? I'm so proud of these boys. They took to that right away. And we didn't die. Two people did die in the fire that weekend. Michael Troy Far and Vicki Keenan. The Texas and M Forest Service has studied the 2011 Wildfire season the worst on record as far as the number of fires that broke out across Texas more than 30,000 and the total number of acres burned close to 4 million. Firefighters from across the country responded to help fight the places. Four were killed in the line of duty. All together, six civilians died. We're looking back on the 2011 Wildfire season 15 years ago by revisiting the KUT oral history forged in flames focused on the central Texas wildfires. These stories continue when we return.

31:26This is a special edition of the Texas Standard. I'm Laurel Rice. Today we're revisiting the stories of the 2011 Central Texas Wildfires, the most destructive in Texas history. This Labor Day marks 15 years since the fires. The Day of the Wildfire, I drove into the bank to cash a check to go to the Grange to see Merrill Haggard play at their county fair there. And I saw some smoke over in the distance. And I went to go check it out. My name is Christine Files. I am the president of the Bass Drop County long-term recovery team. And I got out to Highway 21 and pine tree loop and saw what was a black tornado crossing Highway 21.

32:26And it was not until you looked about 300 feet in the air that you could see flames. Oh my goodness. Uh oh. Why is the traffic stopped? This is bad. Turning around. Oh, we had to turn around. I don't want to be... We're going to turn around. Now those people are coming through there. Uh oh. Here comes a fire truck behind us. There's fire on the fire. We got to get out of here. It was very clear to everybody that there was not enough firefighting forces or equipment to handle the fire. It was burning so rapidly and so quickly that we had three, four times, even ten times the fire trucks that we had. We would have made no difference to all of them on the fire in those first few hours.

33:28My name is Chris Barron and I'm the executive director with the State Firemen's and Fire Marshal's Association of Texas. We were very strapped. And I was working the emergency operations center and they're calling me asking for air resources or other resources from across the state. And I call our state coordinator and I said, hey look, I need a strike team from wherever you can get it from, the firefighters. Calls me back and he said there's pretty much strapped for resources because there was not enough fire fighters there wasn't enough equipment around. We saw the fire that we had been having nightmares about for years. I'm Tom Bogus. I'm the director of the Texas Forest Service. Where there's fire hit and where it burned through was if we had to pick a spot where we don't want to fire in that area, that's where it hit.

34:34We evacuated people's best we could. We were all, you know, there wasn't very many of us that day. I think there was 16 of us firefighters. And we all grabbed our phones too and we started to check on people while we were getting ready and while we were back in the highway. You know, just trying to get everybody out. You know, people that had a lot more time, we were telling them, you know, call everybody, tell everybody to get out. And Mark Quinn, my address was 267 Winfield thicket, but there were so many roads, so many places. It was growing so quickly in so many directions that even with all of the emergency responders focused on evacuation, it was neighbors, notifying neighbors, checking on neighbors saying, hey, wake up or you home, let's get out of here that made the difference. Getting the facts is the hardest part to the whole situation because no one knows the facts because it's spreading so randomly differently.

35:36Austin Stitzer, I was at Capitol, Texas zoo volunteering to help the animals, help the community best I could. We'd ask one firefighter or one thing and then I ask another person on the street and another thing and it's two different stories of what the fire is doing. So we literally just have to go drive it, you know, to figure it out. My name is Tensley Meadows. My name is Pamela Meadows. Bastard, Texas. Our road actually went to the park. Yeah, when I did go to the state park, you know, didn't know what to do. We didn't have time to try and try to get our cat. We didn't have time to grab anything. Just get in the vehicle and leave. I mean, you had to go. All I saw was smoke, but I mean, it was just you couldn't see anything coming. You couldn't see any flames or you just see smoke. A lot of black smoke. I saw the flames for the first time as they were coming to where we were holding on on Highway 71. It was insane.

36:38We saw the fire come over the ridge. It was just a monster, a mountain of fire coming across, had four or five tornadoes of fire coming out of it. I saw vortexes like fire tornadoes that day. Some of them that had flipped on their side and pulled, as you're looking at it, it would pull in like a tornado on its side. And it made like a tunnel that was whirling. Weaving back and forth. It was beautiful. I mean, it was strangely beautiful. It was fascinating. It was like looking into hell it was. And the whole sky, when it should have been getting dark, was glowing. You couldn't even look behind you without it glowing. It was all glowing. And just the noise has started. A fire that size, the sound is lettering a jet engine. It's horrible loud. And over top of that, you can hear the explosions.

37:39The barn where my goats were just went pfft. And the fire wall went through the corrals where the horses were. It was about as high as their hawks. The shed where the heavy equipment, the tractors, were kept, just exploded. The buildings where the tack was kept just went pfft. And that was the last I could see. The smoke just completely filled our view. I mean, it was the smell. You never forget. You know, it was different than just the normal campfire. You know, it had that smell of things that shouldn't be burning. I remember at one point, the ground was shaking. The whole ground. I looked kind of down the line where we were trying to hold my apartments, not like most apartments. It's not what a normal citizen would think of as fire fighters. We're, you know, a bunch of retired people, several women. I'm 115 pounds, 45 years old, you know, exactly.

38:41What you think of as fire fighter, not that. Do you know what we're doing? You know, no training can prepare you for this. I thought, you know, where are the farm boys? It was painful. Tracy broke down. I had tears in my eyes. It was just the realization sitting there at that blockade stopped, staring out at the night sky with that orange glow and just realizing it's gone. And yet, after that moment, coming to the realization that we're alive. The voice of Tim Risto, who lost his home to the Bastrop wildfire on September 4, 2011.

39:45Hundreds of homes were lost that Sunday and still the monster burned out of control. It would become by far the most destructive wildfire in Texas history. This is Forged Inflames, an oral history of the Labor Day wildfires produced by our home station KUT. We are revisiting these stories as we mark 15 years since the wildfires. Still ahead on this special edition of the Texas Standard, the work to control the blazes and the start of recovery. This is the Texas Standard. I'm Laura Rice. Today marks 15 years since the Labor Day wildfires, the most destructive in Texas history. By Monday, September 5, 2011, the tallies were rolling in. In Steiner, 23 homes destroyed. In Spicewood, more than 10 square miles burned.

40:47Whole swaths of central Texas were without power. In Bastrop, at least 400 buildings were lost. And the fire was still raging out of control. In Spicewood, Chris and Debbie Optal had tried to save their home. We got up on the roof of our house and we could see all around central Texas. And there were fires burning in Steiner Ranch and Bastrop in Leander. It just looked like, and still fires burning all around us. And it just looked like, it looked like all of Texas was burning. I am Roger Wade, the senior public information officer for the Travis County Sheriff's Office. We were receiving inquiries from news media across the world about what was going on in central Texas. I set up interviews with radio free Russia, Al Jazeera, Australia. And they were getting the story. And I think local media was getting the story.

41:52But those up to the minute reports that needed to come out of the individual fire areas on what was going on so that people could be calm about what to expect when they get back home. Was not coming out. And that's what we need to work on better. It's one of those things you'll never forget kind of where you're at and what you're doing. And after effects of, oh my gosh, we just didn't realize it was going to be this bad. My name is Chris Barron. And I'm the executive director with the State Fireman's and Fire Marshall's Association of Texas. The whole state was in a bad predicament. At one point in time we had every air tanker in the entire country in Texas except for one. The fire department on the ground has to make a decision that this is our fighting line. And we're going to fight fires to this side of it. And we're going to lose everything to that side of it. William Hansen, I'm a star flight paramedic and crew chief for Travis County Star Flight.

42:54You would like to save everything. And I know in Bastrop, you know, they drew lines across whole communities and sacrificed them just because they knew they couldn't contain the fire to that area. And hundreds or thousands of homes were lost and there was just nothing you could do about it. My name is Laura Kelly and I lost my home in the fire. A lot of us, we were just watching. We could hear explosions. I guess propane tanks or, you know, and then you would see, you could see where the firefighters were trying to spray, you know, with water, the fires. And then it would just come back. It was like over and over. And I thought, where is this? There was probably a week where we worked 24 hours straight. My name is Jared McKesco. I'm an engineer with the Perdinand Fire Department. We ended up, we worked all the way through the night and then got our relief at 9.30 in the morning.

43:56Went home, slept, and then came back the next day in order to help the guys out. You know, and we did that throughout the two weeks. We would drive the food out to them and they would be laying on cots. They'd be filthy. The firemen would be out fighting. And we would pull up with food and they'd all get these big grins on their faces. And after a while, after the first couple of days, they got to know us. My name is Debbie Smith. I helped feed all the firemen during the fire and the sheriffs and the chiefs. And whoever wanted food, we had food for them at station one, Spicewood, Texas. Mind you, it's smoky around these staging areas. You can hear crackling. I mean, it was frightening to me. And they, you know, it was, it was just an amazing thing to watch them handle themselves with such grace and such dignity and such attention.

44:58My name is Tensley Meadows. My name is Pamela Meadows. Bastrop, Texas. The fire department was leaving food out. Food and water for the animals. Before they let anybody back there, you know, because people have a lot of house pets and so they would see animals and they were trying to take care of them. But we had, I think, five firefighters that lived on our road. And I think they all lost their homes. So, you know, they were out trying to save other people's homes and lost theirs and, you know, in the big picture of things. They're really heroes. Oh, they're absolutely heroes. And it's amazing that nobody, none of them got hurt. I'm Charles Holmer-Asler, the pastor of Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Bastrop. A firefighter went over towards the map and other firefighters from various places began to gather to listen to his briefing.

45:59As he's talking, I look to my right and there's this gentleman who looks like he's right out of a movie set. He's probably six, three years old and he's got these broad shoulders and you can tell he's muscular and all this stuff. And he's got a fireman's uniform on. And on his breast pocket is a thing that says something about Alabama. I looked at him and I whispered, you're here all the way from Alabama? Oh, yeah. And not just me. We have a whole crew and trucks. I said, how did you get all those people here and the trucks and everything? He said, we've been ready. When we first heard how bad this was and how the wind was blowing, we knew you needed us. And the guy on the other side of me says, oh, yeah, that's why we're here. And on his breast pocket is Oklahoma.

47:05I was just blown away by that. And that kind of thing happened every day over and over. It was nearly a month before all of the Central Texas fires were out. Two lives had been lost nearly 50,000 acres burned. It soon became clear that many of the most destructive fires sparked on that Labor Day weekend involved power lines. As the flames receded, claims had to be made. Homes rebuilt, erosion falling limbs and even water contamination became challenges. After the fires, communities and firefighters alike had to rethink their approach to managing wild spaces near neighborhoods and insensitive ecosystems like the lost pines. 15 years later, the scars left by these fires aren't as obvious. New families have moved in. Trees planted in the recovery are getting taller.

48:08But those who lived through the Central Texas wildfires won't forget them. Forged inflames is an oral history of the Labor Day wildfires. The hundreds of hours of interviews were collected in the months after the 2011 fire outbreak and are housed in full at the Dolph Brisco Center for American History. The project was produced by Emily Donahue and a whole crew of reporters, volunteers and interns led by producer Ann Leifesty. Original music was composed by Graham Reynolds. This has been a special edition of the Texas Standard. I'm Laura Rice. We'll see you back here tomorrow. Support for Texas Standard comes from HEB and the MyHGB app, which is available for download and shopping fresh departments like seafood, produce, bakery, and deli and scheduling curbside pickup or home delivery. More at HEB.com

49:09The philanthropic support for Texas Standard comes from Casey and Scotto Hare, the Winkler Family Foundation, Lynn Dopson and Greg Woldrich, Adrian Killam, and the George Huntington family. You've been listening to the Texas Standard, Texas Standard, and KUT Public Radio are members of the NPR Network. It's an independent coalition of public media podcasters. You can find a lot more great content and shows like the Texas Standard and the NPR Network, available wherever you listen to podcasts.