An unfortunate brake failure on a vehicle caused a large grass fire that spread into a mobile home park on Friday. Guymon Fire Department responded to the 911 call of a vehicle fire at 12:05pm Friday near 2200 Mile 32. As Firefighters were responding, it became clear that an adjacent grass fire with large flames was moving quickly to a nearby mobile home park on the corner of 24th & Hurliman Rd in northeast Guymon.
“Our immediate priority was to evacuate people, protect and save as many homes as possible, and extinguish the spread of the fire quickly”, said Fire Chief Grant Wadley. First arriving Guymon Police Officers immediately began going from home-to-home evacuating occupants from the mobile home. Near zero visibility due to smoke conditions were present when Officers were getting people out. Fire units then began to strategically placing between the homes and protecting against the wind blown flames. Guymon Firefighters requested additional assistance from Optima, Goodwell, Hooker, Hough, Texhoma, and Hardesty to battle this fire. “With the work of all these Fire Departments, 7 mobile homes were saved with minor exterior damage, 1 storage shed was destroyed, and several utility poles were damaged” stated Chief Wadley. Approximately 50 acres burned. No injuries were reported, and families were able to return to their homes within 2 hours. Firefighters remained on the fire scene for approximately 4 hours. Damage costs are not available at this time.
Firefighters could not have contained and extinguished this fire in time if not for the additional aid of employees from the Seaboard Hurliman Office and employees from Nutrien Ag Solutions. These 2 businesses used their office fire extinguishers and immediately jumped into action slowing the fire down enough for Firefighters to begin their operations. “Both these businesses have in-house safety training on the use of fire extinguishers and today their training was put to the real live test”, said Chief Wadley.
Assistance at this fire was also received by Texas County Sheriff Office, Tri-County Electric, Scout Energy, Western Equipment of Guymon, Texas County District #2, Texas County Commissioners, and City of Guymon.