By Thursday night, March 9, Bill Barby had been fighting fire and rescuing cattle for four days with very little sleep on a ranch that sprawls across the border of Clark and Comanche counties.

He was exhausted. His horses were exhausted. And much work remained to be done. His phone had been ringing constantly — some calls from people just wanting to touch base, to make sure his home was spared, but many, many more from fellow ranchers wanting to offer their help with hay supplies, fencing supplies, volunteer labor or moral support.

He was overwhelmed.

"I appreciate all the good thoughts," he said. "I just don't have time to talk to everybody. There is just too much to be done and too little time to get it finished."

Case in point: Cattle needed to be moved off burned-out pastures where they were breathing smoky air and ingesting charred forage that may cause health problems and taken to wheat fields or rented and donated pastures — some of them hundreds of miles away. All day long he'd been moving cows to pasture in southern Oklahoma, away from the fire zone.

SMOKY SUNSET: Cows and calves were being fed hay in blackened Clark County pastures. Constant winds that whipped dirt and ash into the air and smoke from smoldering fires made for a hazy but colorful sunset on the evening of March 9.

Trapped by fire
Barby said the fire hit his ranch during the day on March 6. He was 6 miles from the main highway, down a rutted pasture road, working cattle in a corral holding area, when he got a call from the local volunteer fire marshal, telling him he needed to get out of there — that the fire was moving his way at a speed approaching 30 miles per hour.

"I was down here with one road in and out and the fire over that road," he said. "I knew I couldn't get out."

He pointed to a steel storage building at the corral complex.

"I took shelter in that building, and the wildfire just rolled right over me," he said. "If that building hadn't been here … well, I'm lucky that it was here."

Like other ranching families who saw their pastures, corrals, fences and, in some cases, homes destroyed by the fires that burned 500,000 acres in Clark and Comanche counties, Barby feels lucky to have made it through with no serious injuries.

The same is true in 19 other Kansas counties hit by wildfire during the warm, windy first week of March.

BLACK FOR MILES: The hot-burning Starbuck wildfire left a landscape of nothing but ash for miles in Clark and Comanche counties where 500,000 acres of Red Hills pastures burned. The record fire came just a few weeks shy of a year from the Anderson Creek wildfire, which until the first week of March was the largest in state history.

Only one death in Kansas has been attributed to the record wildfires, a trucker whose rig overturned on a smoky gravel road in Clark County and was engulfed in flames.

Once the fire passed, Barby made his way back to the main highway where his trailer and horses were waiting.

"I didn't know what to do with the horses. I couldn't leave them in all the smoke, and fires were still burning. I finally decided to just take them home with me," he said. "I tied them up in the front yard of my home in Protection and just left them there all night. I was exhausted and after I cleaned up, I just collapsed. But I woke up four hours later and couldn't get back to sleep. My mind was just racing with all I had to do. I just got up at 3 a.m. and went back at it. I haven't slowed down much since."

Neighbor offers empathy
A neighbor, Ted Alexander, who went through a similar experience a year ago when the Anderson Creek wildfire wiped out 90% of his ranch in Barber, knows exactly how Barby feels. And he knows what is coming next.

"You are getting very close to the point of collapse. Don't let it get to you," Alexander advised. "Don't be afraid to ask for help, to let your friends know how devastated you are."

He said he remembers the point of collapse as about a week into the crisis, when physical resources were just used up, and the body demanded rest. Waking up from that physical collapse, he says, is when the emotional toll hits hard.

This is no time for "cowboy stoicism," Alexander says. The emotional toll that dozens of ranchers in Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas will face in the coming months as they deal with the aftermath of devastating wildfires is nothing to take lightly.

"You work your whole life building up your ranch. Sometimes there are three or four generations invested in the genetics of that cattle herd that just got decimated. In the first days or even weeks, you just deal with the work that has to be done. At some point, it hits you just how big this setback is, and it just knocks you down," he said.

Alexander said his close relationship with his son, Brian, helped him cope with the devastation of Alexander Ranch after Anderson Creek. He said his neighbors will draw on similar relationships with family, friends and neighbors to weather the hard months ahead.

"The important thing is to remember what is not lost," Barby said. "My family is safe. My house was spared. The grass will grow again. And we will rebuild."

For a list of resources and programs available to help or to make a donation to the relief effort, go to kla.org.