YATES CENTER — Investigators still are trying to determine who or what caused a Friday grass fire that rapidly spread out of control, consuming a Yates Center nursing home in the process.
Rich Watson, a deputy with the Kansas State Fire Marshal’s office, said investigators are continuing to gather information and conduct interviews.
“It’s gonna take us a couple weeks to get our facts together,” Watson said at a Tuesday press conference. “We don’t like to push it any harder than we have to. We want to make sure that it’s right. We have one shot to do this.”
Johnny Atkin, Woodson County emergency management director, broke down the sequence of events that led to the nursing home’s destruction.
Despite the ferocity of the fire — fueled by winds in excess of 50 mph — there were no injuries.
All 38 residents inside Yates Center Health and Rehab were safely evacuated within 12 minutes of the order to clear the facility.
Three were taken to area hospitals for observation, but were not injured. All 38 have since been taken to sister facilities operated by Mission Health Communities, which ran the Yates Center nursing home.
FRIDAY’S warm, dry and windy weather, coupled with vegetation that had not yet begun to germinate, made conditions ripe for fire danger, enough that Woodson County had established a burn ban.
The conditions were so dangerous that the National Weather Service said “extreme to catastrophic” fires could arise at a moment’s notice.
Sure enough, the first call came in, shortly after 2 p.m. Friday of a large, fast-moving fire near Deer Road and 200 Road, about 18 miles northwest of Yates Center.
Mutual aid from Coffey County, Greenwood County and Yates Center was requested. By 3:11 p.m., the county requested state-level mutual aid for firefighting efforts in the northern part of the county.
Six minutes later, a disaster declaration was made for Woodson County.
“On any other day,” Atkin told the Register, “that would have been your big story.”
ON AN afternoon filled with potential calamity, emergency crews were actually about to catch their first big break.
At 3:23 p.m., staff at Yates Center Health and Rehab reported an approaching grass fire, likely emanating from South Owl Lake, less than a mile to the southwest.
