Texas fires leave homes in ashes
Calm winds help firefighters battling 45,000-acre wildfire
IVAN, Texas – With calmer winds giving firefighters a chance to get a handle on a few massive Texas wildfires Saturday, some residents returned to their homes – or what was left of them – in communities ravaged by the blazes.
Gary Glasscock, who owns a 300-acre ranch near Possum Kingdom Lake, found his ranch house and most trees destroyed in a fire that had grown to 45,000 acres Saturday after combining with another fire. In the popular recreation area about 120 miles west of Dallas, many resort homes were untouched by the flames while some mobile homes were left in ruins. At some houses, only the garages had burned.
He said he was thankful that some friends who had been doing construction work on his property escaped the flames in time, but was sad to see the loss of the newly rebuilt ranch home that held special memories for his wife and three children.
“It’s just gray ash with a haze over it. It’s just like a ghost town,” Glasscock said.
While other fires in Texas also came closer to being contained, 10 new fires broke out in East Texas, said Marq Webb of the Texas Forest Service.
“It was better than yesterday, but still not a good day. We did still have some pretty strong winds, and that can create its own set of problems,” Webb said Saturday evening, adding that escalating fire conditions are forecast through next week.
Winds were about 10 mph Saturday in some parts of the state after whipping in the 50 mph range a day earlier, said Dennis Cavanaugh of the National Weather Service.
But Texas could be fighting fires for as long as two months because of drought conditions around the state, said Steve Deffibaugh, another Texas Forest Service spokesman. A sense of urgency will remain “until we get a significant amount of rain,” he added.
Volunteer firefighter Gregory M. Simmons, 51, died Friday while battling a 3,000-acre blaze Friday afternoon near Eastland, Mayor Mark Pipkin said. Simmons and other firefighters fled their truck as it was being overrun by flames, and Simmons fell in a ditch, where the fire caught him, said Justice of the Peace James King.
About 20 homes were destroyed in Wichita County on Friday, and firefighters continued battling three blazes that had grown to 7,100 acres by Saturday in the area about 150 miles northwest of Dallas near the Oklahoma border, state officials said.
Wildfires have spread across more than 700,000 acres – about the size of Rhode Island – in the past week in drought-stricken Texas, including half a dozen massive fires still burning.