As tens of thousands of acres burned around him Sunday, Pastor Wade Berry focused on the gravel parking lot in front of him.
Behind him was his church — at least, what’s left of it. Before him, about four dozen people sat in folding chairs, waiting for him to say they’ll all be OK.
“Thank you all for being here,” he said at the beginning of an impromptu outdoor worship service. “I am so, so sorry it has to be this way.”
Second Baptist Church in downtown Ranger, about 120 miles west of Dallas, was destroyed Thursday evening after flames overtook the 103-year-old building. The fire, fueled by wind, is believed to have started from the flicker of a barbecue pit.
Along a single street, the fire jumped from one historic building to the next, before finally, it reached Berry’s sanctuary. The roof and third floor collapsed, while the bottom half of the structure suffered severe damage from water and smoke.
“We can’t go inside yet because it’s still too unstable,” Berry told The Dallas Morning News. “We are almost positive it is nothing less than a total loss. I pray we’ve endured the worst we’ll see.”
A perfect storm
What happened in Ranger is only a part of the destruction caused by the Eastland Complex fires, which as of Sunday afternoon stretched over 54,000 acres, destroying dozens of homes and killing an Eastland County sheriff’s deputy.
Sunday morning, the Texas A&M Forest Service said there was potential for new, significant fires near multiple cities including Amarillo, Lubbock, Midland, San Angelo, Abilene, Childress, Wichita Falls, Mineral Wells, Lampasas and Fredericksburg. By afternoon, some of those predictions were coming true.
The temperature in Eastland County reached the high 70s this week, and combined with gusts of wind between 20 and 30 mph and low humidity, the forest service said it was the perfect storm for additional blazes.
Starting Saturday night, new fires were already popping up one by one. In Carbon, where 85% of the town was burned in a rapid haze, some firefighters were just sitting down for a hot meal and breathing treatments after three 20-hour days in the ash-filled air when a call came in for assistance along State Highway 6 about 7 p.m.
Then, minutes later, a power line just blocks from the fire department snapped, igniting flames in a nearby tree. Meanwhile, only two of the department’s four fire trucks were working, with one replacement on its way from Waco. Carbon was struggling to hold on.
“I can’t handle this right now,” said Wendy Forbus, the fire chief’s wife, as she watched it all unfold. “It’s just never ending.”
About 1 p.m. Sunday in Rising Star, a tornado of smoke erupted just beyond a field of cattle along the town’s County Road 230, between U.S Highway 183 and State Highway 206. An hour later, the Texas Emergency Management Agency issued a bulletin that the fire was “fast-moving” and that residents in the vicinity needed to evacuate immediately.
Moments after that, Lipan, part of Hood County, went under a mandatory evacuation. Then people in Tolar and Bluff Dale, on the Hood and Erath county line, were also told to leave.
Residents cling to hope for rain Monday
At a news conference Friday, Gov. Greg Abbott said it was their hope showers would “lessen the possibility for future fires at least in the short term.” Rain is finally expected to come Monday, when National Weather Service meteorologist Monique Sellers said just under an inch of rain will fall across Eastland County.
“The rain will relieve how dry it is in those grassy areas prone to fires,” she said. “Unfortunately, Monday is the only day we’re seeing any rain for the foreseeable future, and the windy days will continue.”
Until then, all throughout the affected counties were signs of faith carrying people through.
In Carbon, firefighters wore department-issued T-shirts that read “In God We Trust.” In Rising Star, it was a banner on a barbed-wire fence: “We are never alone. Our Savior is here.”
Back in Ranger, Wade delivered a sermon and a series of prayers dedicated to “everyone suffering through the forces of nature in Texas.” He mentioned residents who lost everything as their homes turned to rubble, the firefighters from 13 state agencies and 48 local fire department who dropped everything to help, including Eastland County’s Sheriff Deputy Sgt. Barbara Fenley, who was killed going door to door trying to help people flee.
“We are always more than the tragedies we face,” he said. “There is beauty in ashes, hope in despair and hope is evident, even in mourning.”
Still, like everyone else in West Texas, Berry admits he has more questions than answers.
Will the town rebuild and start anew? He isn’t sure. Maybe, he says, they’ll just take what’s left and move it a few doors down. Either way, it doesn’t matter. What he’s learned in the midst of devastation is this: It’s the bond he shares with his congregation that constitutes a church; a shared commitment to loving one another that constitutes a community.
“I don’t want to minimize anyone’s grief, but how lucky are we to see so many come together in this way as we face the unknown,” Berry said.