Panhandle wildfire documentary ‘We’re Here’ captures ranchers’ resilience

In late February and early March, a set of wildfires burned millions of acres in the Texas Panhandle. The Smokehouse Creek fire grew to the largest wildfire in state history. The fire killed two people, thousands of cattle, and caused millions of dollars in property damage.

As firefighters extinguished the final few embers, a film crew arrived in the Panhandle to interview people in the immediate aftermath of the blaze. The result is the documentary “‘We’re Here,” which has been screened in theaters across the Panhandle over the past few weeks.

Lee Wells, the film’s director, spoke to Texas Standard about making the movie. Listen to the interview above or read the transcript below.

This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:

Texas Standard: You started shooting this just about two weeks after the fire had started. Tell us about the sort of things you saw in the direct aftermath.

Lee Wells: Well, sure. We were hauling feed and hay out to the ranchers. And on one of those trips, I grabbed a film crew and realized we needed to capture this now, while it’s still a thing, before the grass comes back – before people move on with their lives.

And I’m so glad we did. We’ve got just amazing footage of just a lot of real reaction, response, conversation around this tragedy. And it turned out to be pretty cool. Really, a neat project.

What did you hear from folks who were actually fighting the fire? What was their experience like?

Most of the people I talked to are ranchers. I’m a rancher here in the north-of-Dallas area. So I was out talking to ranchers from a ranchers perspective.

That’s how I was able to sit down with them in the first place. I wasn’t a reporter, not a journalist. And so from a rancher to a rancher, they opened up and their response was, first of all, they were overwhelmed by the magnitude of this fire, the speed of this fire and the destruction of the fire.

But they were also overwhelmed by the outpouring of generosity from strangers across the state and even just all over the United States, people just pouring out help and hope. And it was amazing. It was an amazing thing to sit down and try to consume or try to understand this process from their point of view.