March 13, 2017
By Paragon News Director Paul Joseph –
The mysterious, smoky looking haze that has drifted over parts of the Paragon Communications listening area is leftover ash and dust from last week’s devastating fires.
A check with various fire departments in the area including Clinton, Woodward and Elk City indicates that there are no new fires anywhere in the area – as of airtime.
The opinion, however, of many of the fire chiefs is that the haze that started out near Woodward Monday morning and – with 10-20 mile per hour winds – drifted down to the Clinton and Elk City areas in the afternoon is from the “over” one million acres that burned in a number of wildfires last Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday .
Those fires in the Texas Panhandle, Kansas and northwest Oklahoma killed hundreds of animals and at least five people as it destroyed a number of homes and career livelihoods.
According to area farmer rancher Monte Tucker near Sweetwater/Sunnypoint, the 1.195 million total acres that burned equates to 18-hundred and 66 square miles if the damaged areas were placed next to each other.
That’s 43 miles wide and 43 miles tall which would blanket the entire Oklahoma City area from north to south, east to west and include Norman on the south and Edmond on the north.
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