STINNETT, Texas (AP) – Snow fell across a desolate landscape of burnt grasslands, dead cattle and burnt-out homes in the Texas Panhandle on Thursday as efforts to suppress the largest and most widespread fire continued. The desperate efforts to do so gave the firefighters a momentary sense of relief. in state history.
The Smokehouse Creek Fire has grown to nearly 1,700 square miles (4,400 square kilometers). The fire has been combined with another fire and is only 3% contained, according to the Texas A&M Forest Service.
A gray sky loomed over a huge scar in the blackened earth. rural area It is dotted with scrub, ranches, rocky canyons, and oil rigs. In Stinnett, a town of about 1,600 people, someone placed an American flag outside a destroyed home.
Dylan Phillips, 24, said he hardly recognized Stinnett's neighborhood, which was littered with melted street signs and charred car and truck frames. His family's home survived, but at least six people's homes were covered in rubble.
“It was brutal,” Phillips said. “The streetlights were out. It was just embers and flames.”
smokehouse creek fire explosive growth Thursday's snow, winds and cooler temperatures slowed it down, but it remained untouched and threatening.The largest of several large fires that occurred in rural panhandle areas of the statealso expanded into Oklahoma.
Firefighter Lee Jones was working in Stinnett on Friday and over the weekend as temperatures and winds increased to help extinguish the remains of a smoldering home and prevent a flare-up.
“Snow helps,” said Jones, one of about a dozen firefighters from Lubbock called in to help. “We're hitting all the hot spots around town, all the houses that are already on fire.”
Officials have not said what caused the fire, but strong winds, dry grass, unseasonably warm temperatures gave fire to the flame.
“The rain and snow is a boon right now, and we're using that to our advantage,” Texas A&M Forest Service spokesman Juan Rodriguez said of the Smokehouse Creek Fire. “If the fire is not exploding and moving quickly, firefighters can actually catch up and get to that part of the fire.”
Officials said the fire area was 1,640 square miles (4,248 square kilometers) on the Texas side of the border. The previous largest fire in state history was the 2006 East Amarillo Complex Fire, which burned approximately 1,400 square miles (3,630 square kilometers) and killed 13 people.
The only confirmed death so far this week was an 83-year-old woman. But authorities have not yet conducted a thorough search for victims or tallied the large number of homes and other structures that have been damaged or destroyed, as the fires continue to pose a widespread threat.
President Joe Biden was visiting Texas on Thursday. border between us and mexico, said it had directed federal authorities to do “everything possible” to assist communities affected by the fires, including sending firefighters and equipment. The president said the Federal Emergency Management Agency has guaranteed that Texas and Oklahoma will be reimbursed for emergency costs.
“When disaster strikes, there are no red states or blue states where I come from,” Biden said. “The only people asking for help are communities and families. So we stand with everyone affected by these wildfires and will continue to support their response and recovery.”
Republican Gov. Greg Abbott issued a disaster declaration for 60 counties and was scheduled to visit the Panhandle on Friday.
Nim Kidd, director of the Texas Division of Emergency Management, said the weekend forecast and the “scale and scope” of the fire were the biggest challenges for firefighters.
“We don't want to give people in this area a false sense of security that the fire won't spread any further,” Kidd said. “This remains a very dynamic situation.”
Jeremiah Caslon, 39, of Stinnett, who witnessed a neighbor's home destroyed by flames that stopped at the edge of his property, is preparing for what the changing forecast may bring. was.
“The weather around here changes all four seasons in a week,” Carson said. “It's hot, hot and windy, and it will snow the next day. It's just the time of the year.''
The woman who died was identified by her family as former substitute teacher Joyce Blankenship. Her grandson, Lee Quesada, said Wednesday that officers told her uncle that they had found her body in Blankenship's burnt-out home.
The main facility was destroyed by the invading flames. dismantle America's nuclear weapons Operations were temporarily suspended on Tuesday night, but normal operations resumed by Wednesday. small town of FritschHundreds of homes were lost in the 2014 fire, and 40 to 50 more were destroyed this week, Mayor Tom Ray said.
Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller estimated the number of cattle deaths was in the thousands, with many more likely to die.
“There will be some cows that will have to be euthanized,” Miller said. “His hooves and udders would have been burned.”
Miller said individual ranchers could suffer devastating losses. But he predicted the overall impact on Texas' cattle industry and beef consumer prices would be minimal.
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Vertuno reported from Austin, Texas. Associated Press Writer Ty O'Neill in Stinnett, Texas. Jamie Stengle of Dallas; Oklahoma City's Ken Miller also contributed.