DEVASTATION: Smoke billows over a road during the Smokehouse Creek fire in the Texas panhandle on February 27.
by Brian K. Sullivan, Joe Carroll and Julie Fine, Bloomberg
Texas emergency crews are battling the worst wildfire in state history amid forecasts for several more days of dry, windy weather that will make their task more difficult.
Tens of thousands of cattle already may have perished and entire ranches have been wiped out, said Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller. At least one person died due to the blaze — an octogenarian who was trapped in her home, according to multiple media reports. Meanwhile, utility owner Xcel Energy Inc.’s stock plummeted after it disclosed a law firm said it might be responsible for damages.
The largest of multiple blazes scorching the Texas Panhandle — the Smokehouse Creek Fire — expanded more than 20-fold in just two days and now covers 1.075 million acres (1,700 square miles), according to the Texas A&M Forest Service. That surpasses the 907,245-acre East Amarillo Complex fire of 2006 that formerly held the record.
“I know ranchers up there — families that have had these ranchers for more than 100 years — everything is gone,” Miller said during an interview. “All they have is the clothes on the back. You can’t describe how bad it is.”
The region is vulnerable because winter storms have skipped that part of the Lone Star State, which already had been struggling with years of drought, said Paul Pastelok, head of long-range forecasting at AccuWeather Inc. This means the landscape is dry and brush is primed to burn.
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