The drive along highway 2 to Ray North Dakota is beautiful, with rolling hills covered in bright green crops and newly budding trees bordering the fields along the way. If you didn’t know what to look for, you’d never guess what happened here only six months ago.
"We had 75 to 80 mile an hour winds that da, very low humidity, and good vegetation for a fire. With the wind and everything, it did what it did."
Kyle Weyrauch was the fire chief for the Ray Rural Fire department during the October fires of 2024. He and his team were first on the scene when a tree on a power line started the fire near Ray. Pushed by the wind, it quickly jumped the highway and surrounded the town, coming as close as 2 miles from the city. The firefighters of Ray held it back and were able to steer the fire away from the residents, many of whom were trapped in their homes unable to drive through the smoke to safety.
"You could not see. It was like a blizzard, but it was black."
Tom Wheeler and his family fought through the smoke to save Ray. They and other farmers worked with the firefighters to drag the fields, creating dirt barriers that the fire couldn’t cross. Together, they saved the city, but their crop and grazing land in the area was devastated. Though, six months later, the fields are green again, it's been a struggle to get to this point. Tom’s son Blake says they really struggled to plant ground cover this spring.
Blake – “It was this spring after we seeded. We had dirt storms, not dust storms, because it was dirt blowing, wouldn’t you say Dad?”
Tom -- “Yeah dirt and sand. There’s no trash, nothing on top to hold it, so it just blew.”
After much effort, the farmers got seed in the ground and recent rains brought life back to the blackened fields.
Cattle farmers have a long way to go to recover their herds, as many of the cattle who were on the land at the time of the fires were a total loss. Blake says their herd was grazing several different fields when the fire arrived in Ray.
“The younger ones were the ones that ended up getting burned. So, I sold them. Most all of them had visible burns, or singing or problems. But then the older ones were west of town and none of them got burned, but from the smoke and the dust, they just had bad respiratory problems right up until I sold them. So, I figured instead of trying to fight that for a while, I might as well get rid of them and start over.”
The Wheelers had to buy a whole new herd of cattle. They consider themselves lucky though. They can slowly build back their herd and restore the soil through modern technology: some things are harder to replace.
Daryl Holte is now living in Williston. 6 months ago, he lived on the homestead his family set up over 120 years ago. Daryl’s family homestead was 6 miles east of Ray and boasted a house and a big red barn built by Daryl’s grandfather after he settled the land in 1901. Now, its all gone.
“I’m sure my farm was burned like in a half hour. That fire was so hot, it's just ashes.”
Daryl’s only warning that a fire was heading straight towards his home was a text from his sister hundreds of miles away. He packed what little he could and left.
“There’s lots of tragedies, but it just seems like a fire can be worse. Even in a flood, you’ve got something left. At least your papers dry our right? But with the fire, there’s nothing left.”
Daryl’s home was one of only a few lived in homes that were destroyed. Most of the buildings that were taken over by fire were long abandoned.
The aftermath of the fires was devastating for many in the Ray area. 90 thousand acres of land burned, hundreds of cattle were lost, 3 homesteads burned to the ground, and tragically two people died.
But the tragedy also brought out the best in people across the state and nation. Strangers rallied to help the people of Ray.
A good Samaritan drove Daryl to the hospital after his truck was stuck by a semi when he got lost in the smoke trying to escape.
“He stopped by, and he looked at me and said “We gotta get you out of here.” I got out of my pickup and got into this guy’s pickup, I never did get his name, and he took me to the ER in Tioga.”
A neighbor helped Tom bury the 17 cows and 16 calves that died in the fire or needed to be euthanized.
“A friend, well I’d say at that time he was an acquaintance, a pretty good acquaintance but I wouldn’t call him a close friend then, but he called me up and said, “Tom is there anything I can do? I’ve got a backhoe, and I can come and help bury these animals and stuff.” Because it's just a difficult thing. It's your own cows that you’ve raised. That was a huge, huge thing.”
Over 150 Firefighters across the state came to help Kyle and his team fight the blaze.
“There were anywhere from 18 to 20 different fire departments involved, 3 different ambulance services, and there were private companies, dirt working companies form the oilfields, bulldozers, blades, road graters from the county. The staff up at the 911 center, they were rock stars that day, calling people as far as Culbertson, Montana and Portal, North Dakota.”
Food, water, and other supplies poured into the city for the workers, hay was donated and hauled in for the farmers, and hundreds of thousands of dollars were raised to help those effected by the fire and smoke.
People lost a lot in the October fires of last year, but recovery for the community is well on its way. Where only a few months ago, there was a blackened wasteland, there’s now rolling hills of green, cows dotting the landscape, and the little city of Ray, safe and sound in the middle of it all.