EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the first article in a two-part series about the Bear Creek Fire. The epic fire started a year ago today.
LINDEN, Texas-A hot dry wind blowing in Cass County on Sept. 4, 2011, fanned the flames of the Bear Creek Fire and propelled it into the record books as the largest wildfire in East Texas history.
"I've been in this business since 1970, and I've never seen anything like it in my life," said Cass County Emergency Management Director Don Blackwell.
The Bear Creek Fire burned 41,050 acres and destroyed 92 homes in Cass and Marion counties, according to the Texas Forest Service. It took weeks to completely put out all the flames that threatened homes and property near the Cass-Marion county line south of Linden.
The fire, named for the Bear Creek community where it began, was mainly concentrated in a triangle between U.S. Highway 59 and state highways 155 and 49 between Linden and Jefferson.
The smoke could be seen for miles. Indeed, plumes of smoke from the Bear Creek Fire were visible in a NASA satellite image. The image was captured by the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder instrument that flies aboard NASA's Aqua satellite. It was taken Sept. 6, 2011, and shows smoke plumes from several wildfires in Texas.
Though it's been a year, blackened trees still line county roads in many areas, and there are piles of rubble where family homes once stood. Once-thick forests have been considerably thinned, with the remaining trees left presiding over charred ground.
Atlanta, Texas, Fire Chief Robin Betts, who served as incident commander during the fire, called the conditions leading up to the blaze "a perfect storm."
"All of the conditions were right for a really bad fire. The drought was bad, and we had received the dry side of a tropical storm that gave us the wind. It's the only time I've ever seen it that bad, and I hope to never see it again," he said. "It was probably the worst event I've ever worked."
Recent weather conditions have been eerily similar to the conditions right before the Bear Creek Fire started.
"There was a tropical storm last year that we were on the back side of, and we got the winds from it," Blackwell said. "We are in an identical situation this year, except it is not as hot and dry as it was last summer."
Betts and Blackwell said fighting the fire seemed to be an impossible battle at first with the high winds.
"Everybody did as good as they could with what they had, with the wind the way it was," Blackwell said.
Betts said Cass County Judge Charles McMichael asked him to be the incident commander, and he spent 28 days on the job.
"I had 21 people under me from all over Texas, and then when we got federal assistance, they came from Oregon and California, and they were based in Longview," he said.
By Sept. 9, the fire was 30 percent contained, but it would be a couple of more weeks before anything near total containment was achieved.
Linden Volunteer Fire Department Chief Robert Luzio said he believed it was Sept. 22 or 23 before the fire was totally out.
"He (Luzio) did a magnificent job working it," Betts said. "He started that Sunday (Sept. 4) calling in everybody he knew to respond because it was spreading so fast."
Two firefighters suffered minor burns on their hands, but no serious injuries were reported.
According to a fire report compiled by Russell Lykins of the Texas Forest Service, 251 homes within the fire perimeter were saved, along with another 150 around the edge of the perimeter. Some outbuildings, fencing and hay were lost, but the report could provide no good estimates on exactly how many.
Damages totaled $27,222,000, according to the report. More than $6,072,000 represented damage to houses, while $8,500,000 was damage to natural forest.
The cost of the state and federal response to the Bear Creek Fire is estimated at $2,667,877, according to the forest service.
Lykins, who is based in Linden, said he knew Labor Day weekend 2011, the conditions were prime for a large fire.
"Everybody was on alert," he said. He was off on Sept. 4, after working a 21-day stretch, but reported back to work the first night of the fire. "We knew pretty quick, within the hour probably, that it was going to be a big one."
The dry conditions and humidity level made the fire almost impossible to contain.
Lykins said the forest service had been ordering up resources for months to help with grass and wildfires in the area. But their requests were not being filled, because other places were just as needy and had their own fires to fight.
"We knew we needed more help," he said.
The forest service crew based in Cass County and the local firefighters did the best they could with what resources they had.
"We eventually got more resources," he said. "It took us days to get it contained, but we did it. And then we worked on the mopping up for weeks."
At one point, a heavy air tanker, two single air tankers and a helicopter fought the blaze from the air. A shelter opened for evacuees, but most people chose to stay with family and friends.
Betts said people would approach the incident command center still in shock from losing their homes. "They would say, 'I don't know what to do. I lost everything.'"
He said the county judges in both Cass and Marion counties helped support the people of both counties, and the process of applying for FEMA assistance went smoothly for most residents.
There was a lot of timber lost in the fire, but a lot of it was able to be cut despite the fire damage.
About 1,000 acres of new trees were planted early this year on private land and about 2,000 on industry land, Lykins said. He said there are plans to plant another 8,000 to 10,000 acres this year on industry land and expects 9,000 to 13,000 more acres to be planted in early 2013.
"A lot of work is being done," Lykins said. "The county has been cleaning up the county roads, and a lot of folks are getting ready for tree planting and are clearing or salvaging their timber. People started salvaging their timber almost immediately. You could see black logs running up and down the road."
He said much of the timber has been chipped into fuel woodchips and some of it chipped into pulpwood. Larger timber has been cut depending on the severity of burns to it.
"The bad news is it was the biggest fire in East Texas, and it destroyed a lot of people's retirement plans and timber," he said. "The good news is it was a very rural area, and the homes were spread out-or we could have lost more."
Time and new foliage hide and heal many things.
As time goes by, Lykins said, fewer and fewer signs of the damage will remain. "Hopefully, when the trees get replanted and grow, maybe 10 to 15 years from now, it's going to look a lot different."