Sean Gallagher

The recent wildfires that broke out in the Texas panhandle this week are gaining national attention due to the devastation being left behind, including in the town of Canadian: a place where I have been and got to know during my radio career.

I’ve been in Cincinnati now for more than five years, but before that, I spent a little over two years gaining experience in news radio, sports talk and play-by-play in Woodward, Oklahoma, which sits in the northwest part of the state near the panhandles of Oklahoma and Texas: unique parts of the country at the mercy of mother nature.

When I first arrived, I knew spring would bring the chance of severe weather and days where tornadoes would break out, but that wasn’t my introduction to extreme weather in the Southern Plains.

In March 2017, three wildfires broke out in northwest Oklahoma and southwest Kansas, burning almost 1-million acres after a long drought, accompanied by low humidity and warmer temperatures. I was sent out to report on the Selman fire burning just a couple of miles north of Woodward, which began tracking south when the winds changed, forcing me to flee as a dark cloud of smoke was not too bar behind. The smell of smoke and it filling the air that night is something I’ll never forget, especially as someone who had never tracked any kind of severe weather, trying to get as close to it without putting my life at risk.

One year later, another round of wildfires had me on edge to the point where a local newspaper reporter and military veteran Rachel Van Horn noticed I had a “thousand-yard stare”, even taking time to ask over the phone off-air later in the day if I was OK after giving me an update during a newscast, knowing I was a long-way from home and already busy handling regular, daily tasks during a 12-hour shift, now asked to track these horrific fires destroying homes, land and cattle. Rachel recently wrote an article about the wildfires that burned in northwest Oklahoma this week.

Going back to what’s happening in the Texas panhandle, it’s surreal to be sitting in a Cincinnati newsroom watching this historic wildfire impact Canadian, Stinnett and other communities that fell within our range of coverage, not only when it came to news, but also sports.

When I think of Canadian, I’m reminded of the football games that my co-workers and I used to do. While I mainly did the Woodward High School games, I got assigned one of Canadian’s playoff games in Amarillo back in 2017. It was one of my favorite broadcasts, especially since I could say I called a Texas high school playoff football game. A segment of the game is part of my reel.

To see images and videos of buildings that have been burned to the ground in Canadian and other communities in the path of the flames are hard to look at, feeling the helplessness I had all those years ago when I was close enough to smell and see the smoke.