Texas fires continue to burn out of control as worse weekend weather forecasted: Live

“It’s been a rough day in Hemphill County, massive losses of ranch land (over 400,000 acres in Hemphill County alone), scores of homes destroyed, literally thousands of cattle lost and much more than can be described,” an official with the Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service for the county said.

Canadian, Texas — also in Hemphill County — has been devastated by this week’s fires, with several homes destroyed.

The North Plains Electric Cooperative, which serves large swaths of the Texas Panhandle, said they’ll have to repair about 115 miles of power lines in the wake of the fires.

“We have a few scattered areas and the majority of Hemphill Co. that are without power,” the company wrote in a statement. “Our goal is to have ALL that are without power restored by Monday, March 4th.”

Approximately 425 people in Hemphill County — just northeast of where the Smokehouse Creek fire began — are without power as of Friday morning, according to PowerOutage.us.

A second death has been confirmed in the raging wildfires in Texas that have become the biggest blaze in the state’s history.

Cindy Owens, believed to be in her 40s, from Amarillo City in Potter County was confirmed dead by officials on Thursday.

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Strong winds and low humidity will hit the Texas Panhandle this weekend, mirroring the same conditions in the region when several of the blazes started.

“Critical fire weather conditions are expected to return midday Saturday and once again after sunrise Sunday,” the National Weather Service for Amarillo said. “Please refrain entirely from outdoor activities that generate sparks or flames.”

Earlier this week, strong wind gusts and very dry grasses helped fuel these fires — including the Smokehouse Creek blaze, which is now the largest in state history and still only 5 per cent contained.

A Hutchinson County official reminded residents that some cities in the Panhandle are being protected from fires by volunteer-based departments.

“I want to kind of reiterate in Fritch and Stinnett, both are volunteer-based fire departments,” a spokesperson with the Hutchinson County Office of Emergency Management said Thursday afternoon. “So these people do not have to do that. That’s them just doing what they feel like they need to do for their community.”

Both cities were hit hard by the fires scorching 1.2m acres in the Texas Panhandle this week.

An official with the Hutchinson County, Texas Office of Emergency Services said prescribed burning helped prevent this week’s fires from becoming worse.

“You can see where we did our prescribed burns previously, how, thankfully, our wildland team did that, because that saved a lot of people’s properties,” the spokesperson said on a Facebook live video. “I know we couldn’t save everything.”

Late last year, Texas officials conducted a prescribed burn in Hutchinson County, which prevented this week’s fires from spreading into the southern parts of the town of Borger, CNN reports.

Prescribed burns are fires intentionally set in controlled areas to destroy fire fuels like dried-out grass and leaves. Indigenous communities have used this practice for millennia and have long advocated for the US government to adopt it in fire-vulnerable areas.