The second-largest fire in Texas history continues to burn Thursday, with the deadly blaze – already bigger than Rhode Island – and several others destroying scores of homes in the state’s panhandle and killing thousands of cattle.
At least one person has died as a result of one of five large fires, the largest of which is the Smokehouse Creek Fire, an almost 900,000 acre blaze in Texas and Oklahoma that began Monday.
According to her family, Joyce Blankenship. 83, died at her home in Stinnett. County officials there confirmed there was a fatality due to a wildfire but released no information about the victim.
In addition to the Smokehouse Creek Fire, which has burned 850,000 acres in just Texas, the Windy Deuce Fire in that state has burned 142,000 acres and the Grape Vine Creek Fire has charred 30,000 acres. Two other fires have burned 2,500 or fewer acres each.
A sudden shift of wind direction in the Texas panhandle this week contributed to the explosion in size of the Smokehouse Creek wildfire.
Wind was coming straight out of the north and made just this massive wall of fire moving across the landscape, Texas A&M Forest Service spokesperson Adam Turner said Wednesday afternoon.
More than 18.000 cows died in a Texas dairy explosion.
Snow was expected in some areas of the Panhandle on Thursday but was not forecast to be in places affected by the fire.
An official in Hutchinson County, where the Smokehouse Creek, Windy Deuce and 687 Reamer fires are burning, said Wednesday that at least 20 structures in Stinnett, structures outside the Borger city limits, and quite a few structures in Fritch were destroyed.
Probst, the Fritch resident who helped his neighbors then fled, said he returned to his neighborhood Wednesday.
His home, purchased just six months ago, is gone as are entire neighborhoods he drove past on his way to Amarillo, where his family will stay until they figure out what is next.
CNN / ABC Flash Point News 2024.
Winterfire?