Blaze scorching Texas Panhandle grows to the largest in state history
A dusting of snow covered a desolate landscape of scorched prairie, dead cattle and burned out homes in the Texas Panhandle on Thursday, giving firefighters brief relief in their desperate efforts to corral a blaze that has grown into the largest in state history.
The Smokehouse Creek fire grew to nearly 4,400 square kilometres. It merged with another fire and is just three per cent contained, according to the Texas A&M Forest Service.
Gray skies loomed over huge scars of blackened earth in a rural area dotted with scrub brush, ranchland, rocky canyons and oil rigs. In Stinnett, a town of about 1,600, someone propped up an American flag outside of a destroyed home.
Dylan Phillips, 24, said he hardly recognized his Stinnett neighbourhood, which was littered with melted street signs and the charred frames of cars and trucks. His family’s home survived, but at least a half a dozen others were smoking rubble.
“It was brutal,” Phillips said. “The street lights were out. It was nothing but embers and flames.”
The Smokehouse Creek fire’s explosive growth slowed Thursday as snow fell and winds and temperatures dipped, but it was still untamed and threatening. It is the largest of several major fires burning in the rural Panhandle section of the state. It has also crossed into Oklahoma.
Firefighter Lee Jones was helping douse the smouldering wreckage of homes in Stinnett to keep them from reigniting when temperatures and winds increase Friday and into the weekend.
“The snow helps,” said Jones, who was among a dozen firefighters called in from Lubbock to help.
Authorities have not said what ignited the fires, but strong winds, dry grass and unseasonably warm temperatures fed the blazes.
“The rain and the snow is beneficial right now, we’re using it to our advantage,” Texas A&M Forest Service spokesperson Juan Rodriguez said of the Smokehouse Creek fire. “When the fire isn’t blowing up and moving very fast, firefighters are able to actually catch up and get to those parts of the fire.”
Authorities said 4,248 square kilometres of the fire were on the Texas side of the border. Previously, the largest fire in recorded state history was the 2006 East Amarillo Complex fire, which burned about 3,630 square kilometres and resulted in 13 deaths.