The air was filled with dust and - later smoke.

Wind gusts of more than 60 miles per hour were recorded.

Wildfires raged across the state. Yet, Kingfisher County was largely untouched.

“Our county, for a change, fared very, very well,” said Emergency Management Director Ryan Deatherage.

The forecasted hurricane-like winds that were predicted for much of Oklahoma did not disappoint last Friday.

Sweeping in from the west and southwest, they combined with low humidity and dry vegetation to make Oklahoma a sitting tinder box.

That resulted in more than 130 fires reported in at least 44 counties.

The largest of those was in Dewey County where more than 30,000 acres have burned. The wildfires in that area forced a mandatory evacuation of Leedey overnight Friday and into Saturday morning.

The west winds carried smoke from that wildfire into Kingfisher County that evening.

Another hard-hit area was Stillwater, where there was another round of evacuations as more than 50 homes were lost.

In between sat Kingfisher County.

“There were some reports of minor damage, but for the most part we were fortunate,” Deatherage said.

The Oklahoma Highway Patrol shut down State Highway 51 from the intersection of that highway and U.S. Highway 81 in Hennessey east all the way to State Highway 74.

According to the OHP, which also shut down a stretch of U.S. 412 east of Enid, the closures were necessary due to no visibility on the highways from massive amounts of dust.

The lack of visibility caused a number of accidents on both highways, though no major injuries were reported by the OHP.

Kingfisher City Manager Jim Thomas said, locally, there was some minor damage.

One business, Boomarang Diner, suffered damage to the roof and side of its building. A sign at Holiday Inn Express was also damaged.

The roof of a mobile home was reported to have suffered heavy damage as well.

As for services, Thomas said five electric poles were damaged, causing some “spotty outages” but those were quickly repaired.

There were no grass fires in Kingfisher, but multiple calls about electrical lines being down were responded to by the Kingfisher Fire Department.

The Kingfisher Golf Course suffered damage to a number of trees, which did force the closure of the front-nine over parts of the weekend.

Thomas said the city will be picking up debris for residents free of charge.

“The public just needs to get it to the curb,” he said.

There were multiple reports of overturned semitrucks south of Okarche and one grass fire in the town limits.

However, that fire was extinguished before any major damage was done, according to authorities.

According to the Mesonet, the top wind gust in Kingfisher was 63 miles per hour, although there were nine others recorded at 58 miles per hour or more during the day Friday.

Cimarron Electric Cooperative CEO and General Manager Aaron Roark said the co-op lost 22 poles across its system, but did not have any damage from fires.

“Given the record setting sustained winds, we were really happy with our system’s resilience,” Roark said. “Our linemen and contractors did a great job getting our members’ power restored quickly.”

Those experiencing the most disruption were in Major County, Roark said. They “experienced longer outage times because of some broken poles and no options to backfeed.” According to the Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management’s most recent update on Monday, there were four casualties as a result of the high winds and/or fires statewide. One fatality was reported in Garfield County, one in Lincoln County, one in Haskell County and one in Pawnee County. There have been 200 injuries related to the fires and high winds that were reported by hospitals. Following are the numbers and causes of those injuries, according to the report: • 10 - burn • 15 - cut/pierce • 37 - fall • 1 - poisoning • 24 - struck • 46 - transportation related

• 67 - other fire or wind related.

According to the OEM, by Sunday afternoon, state and local emergency management staff had identified more than 400 homes damaged statewide.

It’s reported that fires which were still flaring up Monday - had burned more than 179,000 acres.

A State of Emergency was in effect for 12 Oklahoma counties: Cleveland, Creek, Dewey, Grady, Lincoln, Logan, Oklahoma, Pawnee, Payne, Pottawatomie, Roger Mills and Stephens.

Under the Executive Order, state agencies can make emergency purchases and acquisitions needed to expedite the delivery of resources to local jurisdictions. The declaration also marks a first step toward seeking federal assistance should it be necessary.

Also to help identify all areas of damage across the state, Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management is asking residents impacted by wildfires and/ or straight-line winds to report damages to their property at damage.ok. gov.

Reporting damage helps local and state emergency managers better coordinate response and recovery efforts and can help connect residents to resources.

Residents can report damage to homes, businesses or agriculture through the online survey.