A vast and growing wildfire, one of several in the Texas Panhandle, is now the largest on record in the state's history, burning more than 1 million acres, destroying ranches and burning homes. Despite all efforts, the situation continues to rage out of control.
This sparsely populated region is home to most of the state's cattle, including millions of cows, calves, steers and bulls, and their size and lack of roadways make them inaccessible to people. Passage becomes difficult and fires are more likely to occur.
Wildfires are no stranger to Panhandle ranchers, and many of them know how to convert their pickup trucks into makeshift fire engines to fight the wildfires that regularly break out.
But no one had ever seen a fire quite like the Smokehouse Creek fire. The fire started on Monday and was still burning out of control as of Thursday.
Ranchers are being forced to watch the grasslands their cattle rely on for food turn black. State Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller said the fires may have already killed thousands of cows or injured them to the extent that they had to be killed.
Even those who survive have herds of cattle competing for space to eat. Miller said he knew a rancher who had 1,500 steers but was in a desperate situation with “no grass or water.”
“I'm looking for a place to move the cows,'' he said, adding that he uses a truck to move the cows. “He's going to have to go out of Kansas or Nebraska or Wyoming.”
The economic damage caused by the wildfires is not yet clear. Miller said about 85 percent of Texas' roughly 12 million cattle live in the Panhandle, most of which are concentrated in feedlots and dairy farms. These activities were largely unaffected by the fire, he said.
The ranchers most affected were those with large tracts of land where cattle roamed across tens of thousands of acres.
“My guess is that 10,000 people will die or have to be euthanized,” Miller said. “Sad. A lot of those cows are still alive, but their hooves are burnt off, the teats on their udders are burnt off. It's just a sad, sad situation.”
One of those ranchers, Jeff Chisholm, said he was still trying to figure out how many of his 600 cows were lost. He came across several bodies and bodies that needed to be buried.
“It's tough to watch,” Chisholm said. His ranch was north of the town of Pampa, where the largest fires occurred. Almost all of his 30,000 acre ranch was burned.
“We were driving past cow carcasses strewn along the road and a calf standing alone in a black, desolate pasture,” his wife Lee Chisholm said on Facebook. She added: “So many people have lost so much.”
In addition to the ranchers, the landscape is dotted with townsfolk like Flitch and Canadian, small communities centered around the land and the local church, lost homes, and pretty much everything else. There was one death related to the fire. Joyce Blankenship, an 83-year-old woman, was in her home outside the town of Stinnett when the flames broke out Tuesday.
One of her sons, Paul Blankenship, immediately rushed to her side when he learned through Facebook that the fire had “jumped over the highway” and started burning the area around her home. did. However, the road was already closed. The fire was too strong.
“She was a good mother and she fed us. She loved us,” said Blankenship, 65, whose family has lived in the area since 1958.
Seven-year-old Emlyn Nixon sat hugging a teddy bear alongside her father, mother and three younger brothers in a church in Fritch that was serving as a shelter. Their house was consumed by flames.
Her mother, Allie Matthews, 23, said Emlyn's metal sign was the only thing she could make out of the smoldering remains of the home that had been home to her husband's family for nearly half a century. The 7-year-old girl said that when her grandmother saw her home gone, she was “knocked to her knees.”
“It's really sad because all my memories of Nana were in that house,” she said.
Despite light rain and snow in some areas Thursday, the Smokehouse Creek Fire was only 3% contained, according to the Texas A&M Forest Service. The fires have burned at least 1.075 million acres (more than five times the size of New York City), surpassing the size of the state's largest-ever wildfire in 2006.
The cause of the fire was not immediately known, but utility company Xcel Energy said in a regulatory filing Thursday that it had been sued by a property and casualty insurance company in connection with the fire.
Firefighters from across the state are working to extinguish wildfires in limited time before strong winds and warmer, drier air are expected to return to the region over the weekend.
Forecasters said winds are expected to ease Thursday and temperatures are expected to hover in the 30s to 40s, which could help firefighters. But Edward Andrade, chief forecaster at the National Weather Service office in Amarillo, said light rain probably won't be enough to dampen the fire.
Strong winds of about 30 mph are expected to return Saturday, and temperatures are expected to climb into the 70s. Those conditions are likely to continue Sunday, potentially accelerating the spread of the fire and hampering efforts to extinguish it, Andrade said.
The rugged terrain of the Canadian River Valley, where the fire occurred, was another major obstacle for firefighters, as fire engines were unable to navigate some of the area's cliffs, valleys and steep hills. was.
The Smokehouse Creek Fire, along with other nearby fires, had spread to at least 11 counties and into Oklahoma early Thursday morning.
Blankenship, who lost her mother in the fire, said the last time she saw a fire like the one that hit her area was about 20 years ago. During that fire, he was able to drive to his mother's house to pick her up, and he said he barely made it after struggling to find his turn to head to her mother's house.
“The smoke was so bad we couldn't find the exit. By that time, the fire had crossed the highway and almost consumed the Jeep,” he said. “But we managed to get there and get her mother out of there before everything burned down.”
He tried to do the same on Tuesday. But I couldn't.
John Yoon and Ivan Penn Contributed to the report.
