TULSA, Okla. — Jenks Fire Department said the Gem Dirt fire has been extinguished. They will continue to monitor overnight and tomorrow for possible hot spots.
The Jenks Fire Department said the fire was close to 70% extinguished on March 26.
The department said operations will cease if lightning is detected within 10 miles of the command post and can resume 30 minutes after the last detection.
Crews across the state continue to fight the Gem Dirt mulch fire for a second day.
Since declaring a state of emergency for the city of Jenks, Mayor Cory Box said more resources have opened up that weren't available before.
The SOE was issued more than seven hours after the fire and forestry crews began battling the fire.
Box said issuing the declaration was done for multiple reasons.
"To really get the bigger lights to shine on this problem and for people to actually know it’s a true emergency, you have to declare it," the mayor said. "It gives us the ability to spend money, initiate contracts and authorize the city manager to go ahead and do what has to be done without getting on the phone and getting a council vote."
Since the fire began nine days ago, the same concern has been shared by many residents - why did it take so long to start the work?
"I don't know," said Box. "I think this is an interesting fire, so there's five or six fire chiefs here right now, and all of them are telling me this is nothing that they've ever seen before, and it's nothing they've ever trained for before."
In our earlier reports, Jenks Fire Chief Greg Ostrum told us the Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality did air quality testing around Gem Dirt and had no concerns.
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Erin Hatfield with DEQ said they have no mobile air monitors, but they have a monitor in the Glenpool area. She said that monitor had not picked up anything over the top.
“DEQ did reach out to the facility and suggest they reach out to a contractor and do some on-site air monitoring," said Hatfield.
We reached out to Gem Dirt to see if they had done any of that testing and did not receive a response.
Moving forward, Box said making a plan to prevent something like this happening in the future needs to be the lesson taken away from this situation.
"We need to make sure this Gem Dirt area never happens again," said Box. "That's going to be the real heavy lift and that's going to be the investment we need to make afterwards is to make sure this giant tinder box doesn't happen again. We owe it to our residents."
After the first twelve hours of work, the Gem Dirt fire was about 20% contained. Forestry crews tell us from their experience fighting similar fires that they expect two to three days before the fire is out completely.
The smoke, officials say, could smolder for a few more days.
Tulsa Area Emergency Management Agency is working with JFD to supply residents nearby with N95 respirators. They can be picked up from the fire department in the Southern Reserve neighborhood.
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