Unseasonably warm, windy weather fuels huge Texas wildfiresStrong winds, unseasonably warm temperatures and dry conditions are fuelling out-of-control wildfires in northern Texas.
A cluster of wildfires scorched the Texas Panhandle on Wednesday, including a blaze that grew into one of the largest in state history, as flames moved with alarming speed and blackened the landscape across a vast stretch of small towns and cattle ranches.
Authorities warned that the damage to communities on the high plains could be extensive.
Known as the Smoke House Creek Fire, the largest blaze expanded to more than 3,300 square kilometres and jumped into parts of neighbouring Oklahoma.
It is now larger than the state of Rhode Island, and the Texas A&M Forest Service said the flames were only about three per cent contained.
“I believe the fire will grow before it gets fully contained,” said Nim Kidd, chief of the Texas Division of Emergency Management.
Authorities had not reported any deaths or injuries as of Wednesday morning, while huge plumes of smoke billowed hundreds of feet in the air. But officials warned residents of potentially large property losses.
“There was one point where we couldn’t see anything,” said Greg Downey, 57, describing his escape from the flames as they bore down on his neighborhood. “I didn’t think we’d get out of it.
“When we came out, the sky had gone black.”
Bill Kendall, Hemphill County emergency management co-ordinator, described the charred terrain as being “like a moonscape…. It’s just all gone.”
Kendall said about 40 homes were burned around the perimeter of the town of Canadian, but no buildings were lost inside the community.
“We started getting those losses in the dark, so we didn’t really know what we had until this morning, until we could see,” he said.
A satellite view of an active fire line and burn scars from the Smokehouse Creek wildfire northwest of Miami, Texas. (Maxar Technologies/Reuters)The town of Fritch, with a population of less than 2,000, lost hundreds of homes in a 2014 fire, and appeared to be hit hard again.
The people in that area are probably not “prepared for what they’re going to see if they pull into town,” Hutchinson County emergency management spokesperson Deidra Thomas said in a social media live stream.
She compared the damage to a tornado.
The town remained unsafe for people to return, she said. Tresea Rankin videotaped her own home in the town of Canadian as it burned.
“Thirty-eight years of memories, that’s what you were thinking,” Rankin said of watching the flames destroy her house.
“Two of my kids were married there…. But you know, it’s OK, the memories won’t go away.”
Near Borger, a community of about 13,000 people, emergency officials at one point late Tuesday answered questions from panicked residents on Facebook and told them to get ready to leave if they had not already.
“It was like a ring of fire around Borger. There was no way out…. All four main roads were closed,” said Adrianna Hill, 28, whose home was within about a kilometre of the fire. She said a wind that blew the fire in the opposite direction “saved our butts.”
This aerial image shows property damaged from a wildfire on Wednesday. (City of Borger/Hutchinson County OEM/The Associated Press)Residents ‘pull together in times of crisis’The mayor of Canadian, a small town of about 2,500 people near the state’s border with Oklahoma, told CBC News he believes “upwards of more than 50” homes have been lost, though he did not have a definitive number.
“That’s a pretty big loss for us,” Terrill Bartlett said in an interview with CBC News Network’s Hannah Thibedeau Wednesday afternoon.
He said residents who left their homes were able to return Wednesday, a day after officials ordered ordered nearly thousands of people in the Panhandle to either evacuate or shelter in place.
“Everyone is doing fine. Everyone’s helping each other, you know, cope with their loss,” Bartlett said. “That is what’s so amazing to see, just people helping people that they don’t even know.
“It’s just very comforting to see people pull together in times of crisis.”
WATCH | Rural Texas mayor says widlfre causes ‘pretty big loss’ for small community:
Texas community ‘pulling together’ as wildfires rage, mayor saysTerrill Bartlett, the mayor of Canadian, Texas, says the rural community of 2,500 people experienced a ‘pretty big loss for us’ during the wildfires that destroyed more than 50 homes.
Nuclear weapons facility reopensAuthorities have not said what ignited the fires, but strong winds, dry grass and unseasonably warm temperatures fed the blazes.
Republican Gov. Greg Abbott issued a disaster declaration for 60 counties.
“Texans are urged to limit activities that could create sparks and take precautions to keep their loved ones safe,” Abbott said.
The encroaching flames caused the main facility that disassembles America’s nuclear arsenal to pause operations Tuesday night, but it was open for normal work on Wednesday.
The Pantex plant, northeast of Amarillo, evacuated non-essential staff Tuesday night out of an “abundance of caution,” said Laef Pendergraft, a spokesperson for the National Nuclear Security Administration’s production office at Pantex. Firefighters remained in case of an emergency.
Smoke rises from a wildfire in Texas in this screen grab obtained from a social media video. The main facility that assembles and disassembles America’s nuclear arsenal shut down its operations Tuesday night in Texas as fires raged out of control near its facility. (Jeff Bartlett/Reuters)The plant has long been the main U.S. site for both assembling and disassembling atomic bombs. It completed its last new bomb in 1991 and has dismantled thousands since.
Pantex tweeted early Wednesday that the facility “is open for normal day shift operations” and that all personnel were to report for duty according to their assigned schedule.
Flames move into OklahomaThe Smokehouse Creek Fire spread from Texas into neighbouring Roger Mills County in western Oklahoma, where officials encouraged people in the Durham area to flee.
Officials did not know yet how large the fire was in Oklahoma.
An unrelated fire in Ellis County, Oklahoma, on the Oklahoma-Texas state line, led Tuesday to the evacuations of the towns of Shattuck and Gage.
The evacuation order was lifted hours later, according to county Emergency Management Director Riley Latta. The fire had unknown origins and burned an estimated 122 square kilometres, according to the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture, Food and Forestry.
The National Weather Service issued red-flag warnings and fire-danger alerts for several other states through the midsection of the country, as winds of over 64 km/h combined with warm temperatures, low humidity and dry winter vegetation to make conditions ripe for wildfires.
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