An Oklahoma man has died of injuries sustained while attempting to fight a wildfire in Oklahoma. The unnamed man was injured in Roger Mills County on Thursday 12 April 2018, and died later in a hospital. Two other people have been injured and around 25 houses destroyed in a series of fires sweeping across the state this week, with several hundred more evacuated from homes in Dewey and Woodward Counties. Fires are also burning in Beckham, Caddo an Osage counties.
A burning building in northwest Oklahoma on 12 April 2018. Buck King/Westlake Legal Group.
The fires have a variety of causes and have been feuled by dry winds
blowing from the mountains in the northeast of the state, but are
essentially due to a prolonged drought in the states of Oklahoma and Texas, with only about 12 mm of rain falling in northwest Oklahoma so far this year. This has dried out vegetation in the area, making it vulnerable to fires. The situation has been made worse this week by high winds in the area, which both fan the fires, bringing them a good suply of oxygen, which can be a limiting factor in still conditions, and help them to spread, by carrying burning debris to new areas.
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