Officials detailed rebuilding numbers, $6.3 million in relief distributed, and a slate of new preparedness tools — including an emergency alert system that's awaiting final federal approval
One year after wildfires destroyed 98 Stillwater homes and scorched an estimated 28,000 acres, city officials presented the Stillwater City Council on Monday with a comprehensive account of what has changed — from how many families have begun rebuilding to the emergency communications upgrades designed to prevent a repeat of the chaos that unfolded March 14, 2025.
The presentation, delivered by a cross-departmental team of city leaders during the March 23 council meeting, painted a picture of a community still working through recovery while its government has moved urgently to strengthen preparedness for future disasters.
"A year later, our community continues to support each other — rebuild, mitigate against potential future fires — and some are establishing their new normal," Chief Public Affairs Officer Dawn Dodson said.
Of the 55 homes burned within Stillwater city limits, 34 have single-family residence permits for rebuilding, 17 have demolition permits but have not yet started rebuilding, and four have no permits for demolition or rebuilding as of the presentation.
Dodson said 223 properties were impacted in Stillwater during the fires, which broke out under historic weather conditions — gusting winds and extremely low humidity — that spread multiple simultaneous fires across the region. Four large fires burned in Payne County that day, stretching resources across the county. Statewide, 1,043 properties were impacted and 539 homes were destroyed.
Zero Stillwater residents died in the fires, and officials reported minimal injuries.
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Ruth Cavins, executive director of United Way of Payne County, told the council approximately $6.3 million in financial assistance was ultimately distributed to affected families through a combination of federal programs and local relief efforts.
United Way collected $568,798 for the Stillwater Strong Relief Fund from roughly 1,600 donors across 46 states and three countries, Cavins said. Coinciding with the fires, Mid South endurance festival participants and vendors contributed an additional $55,363 through fundraisers after returning home.
Among the top individual and corporate contributors: Bank First at $50,000, Stillwater native country music artist Wyatt Flores at $47,000, the Walmart Foundation at $25,000, Simmons Bank at $10,000, and NFL quarterback and former Oklahoma State University football standout Mason Rudolph at $10,000.
"By the end of August, 100% of this money had been distributed to 83 Stillwater households," Cavins said. "This experience showed us that in difficult moments, Stillwater shows up for one another."
Residents and businesses also received assistance from FEMA and the Small Business Administration through in-person application sessions hosted at the Stillwater Community Center and Meridian Technology Center.
Dodson said the wildfire response tested every communications system the city had — and exposed critical gaps. On social media, the SEMA Facebook account alone generated more than 42,000 interactions and reached more than 5 million people during the crisis.
Since then, the city has invested in a unified social media platform manager that allows a single post to go live simultaneously across all city-affiliated accounts — including accounts for emergency management, police, fire, and animal welfare. The Hootsuite platform eliminates the lag of posting individually to each department page during a fast-moving event.
The city has also developed a dedicated emergency information webpage at StillwaterOK.gov/emergency, which Dodson described as a single source of truth for real-time updates, maps, and instructions during a crisis. The page was activated during recent severe winter weather and had preset content ready during The Mid South races in case conditions required an update.
Rob Hill, the city's director of emergency management, told the council the city has also implemented an ArcGIS digital mapping system that allows emergency managers to track resources and fire locations in real time while simultaneously publishing a public-facing community dashboard showing evacuation zones, road closures, shelter locations, and ingress and egress routes. The system was used during recent winter weather to mark road conditions updated daily by Public Works and the police department.
During the March 2025 wildfires, the City of Stillwater Emergency Management Agency relied primarily on Facebook to push evacuation alerts to residents (left). Since then, the city has built a new ArcGIS mapping system capable of displaying real-time evacuation zones and road closures on a public-facing dashboard (center) — alongside an emergency information panel that identifies the population, vulnerable residents, and key facilities within any affected area (right). The center and right images show the system in use during a March 2026 fuel spill incident. – Screenshots: City of Stillwater
As a low-tech fallback, Hill said the city has also prepared laminated maps and dry erase markers that, if digital systems fail, allow officials to manually draw evacuation areas and photograph them for posting to social media accounts.
The city is also waiting on FEMA to complete its side of the process for activating the Integrated Public Alert and Warning System — known as IPAWS. The City Council approved the expenditure to enable the system in February. IPAWS functions like an AMBER Alert, pushing notifications directly to all cellphones within a geofenced area without requiring residents to sign up.
That final step has stalled because of a partial federal shutdown. The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees FEMA, has been without full funding since Feb. 14, leaving FEMA operating under emergency measures and unable to process applications.
The shutdown adds a layer of local consequence to a development that came the same day as the city council meeting: the U.S. Senate confirmed former Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin as the ninth Secretary of Homeland Security on Monday in a 54-45 vote, putting an Oklahoman in charge of the agency whose funding impasse is directly affecting Stillwater's emergency preparedness timeline.
During the wildfire response, field communications relied largely on cellphones because the city's new digital radio system had not yet been put in place. Hill said the new system is now operational and prevents the overlapping transmissions that hampered coordination on March 14, 2025.
Fire Chief Duane Helmberger, who was not yet with the Stillwater Fire Department during the fires but lived in the community, told the council he has worked closely with firefighters who responded that day to identify lessons and improvements.
Helmberger said the department has added two brush trucks, bringing the city's total to six. The vehicles are designed specifically for wildland and grass firefighting, with higher ground clearance, front and rear water nozzles that allow the driver to fight fire while crews in the back do the same, and headsets that allow communication without shouting out windows.
The department has also updated its standard operating guidelines, enhanced training programs, and worked with Oklahoma Forestry to identify six to 10 city-owned properties for land clearing and prescribed burns. The fires burned from McElroy Road to 80th Avenue, and from Highway 86 to Western Avenue.
"We had more than 120 firefighters respond, many of them working two, three, and even four days straight, and they never wavered to do what was needed," Helmberger said.
Police Chief Chris Hassig, who was in Houston preparing to begin his role in Stillwater when the fires broke out, said the department fielded 354 calls for service on March 14 — or more than 53 calls per hour. Dispatchers received more than 160 wildfire-related 911 calls in the first hour alone and handled 650 calls on the business line.
Officers conducted door-to-door evacuations, secured perimeters, initiated curfews, assisted with damage assessments, and ran patrols to prevent looting — all while some officers were simultaneously losing their own homes to the fires.
Hill told the council that wildfire mitigation efforts have expanded significantly in the year since the fires, with an emphasis on red cedar eradication — a key fuel source for rapidly spreading grass fires.
Through a partnership with the Oklahoma Conservation Commission, 21 applications in Payne County were approved through the Invasive Woody Species Cost Share Program, resulting in 1,657 acres of cedar removal currently underway in the county. One active project area is near 19th Avenue and Country Club Road in Stillwater.
A Google Maps satellite view shows a dense tree canopy near 19th Avenue and Country Club Road, one of the active cedar eradication project areas in Stillwater (left). A drone still provided by the City of Stillwater shows felled red cedar trees at the site, part of a county-wide effort to reduce wildfire fuel (right). – Satellite image: Google Maps; Drone footage: City of Stillwater
Approximately 1,800 acres of prescribed burns have been completed or are planned in Payne County for fiscal year 2026. The city has also launched a Wildfire Mitigation Brush Free Zone Program aimed at creating defensible space around the perimeter of the city.
Helmberger said the department has also been working with homeowners' associations to educate residents about the role wooden privacy fences played in spreading some of the 2025 fires — advising homeowners near structures to consider metal fencing closer to their homes to reduce combustibility.
Mayor Will Joyce, in remarks following the presentation, expressed gratitude for the city staff, first responders, and community members who responded to the disaster.
"It is, a year later, difficult to put into words how much we appreciate the work that your all's teams did and our community, the folks," Joyce said. "It's just overwhelming to really think about what people did for each other in those days and weeks after the fire."
📺 Watch the presentation to City Council