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1 March 2024
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Texas fires now span over 1,2 million acres, two lives lost, many homes and animals burnt
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The 2024 Texas wildfires are marked by several major fires, including the Smokehouse Creek Fire in the Texas panhandle and part of Oklahoma. The Smokehouse Creek Fire alone has burned an estimated 1 076 638 acres (435 700 ha) in Texas and Oklahoma as of 3 March 32024 with 15 percent containment, becoming the second largest fire in US history. It started on Monday, 26 February 2024, one mile north of Stinnett in Hutchinson County, Texas. Other fires include the Windy Deuce Fire, which also started on 26 February 2024. As of 3 March 2024, it has burned 144 206 acres (58 358 ha), including a portion of Lake Meredith National Recreation Area and it is 60 percent contained. In addition, the Grape Vine Creek Fire started 9,5 miles south of Lefors in Gray County, Texas on the same day, burning an estimated 34 882 acres (14 116 ha) with 60 percent containment as of 3 March 2024.
Firefighters in Texas are still battling the largest wildfire in recorded state history but they were hopeful on Monday that with cooler weather and less wind forecast for this week that they’d get an important break.
The fire, known as the Smokehouse Creek fire, has already scorched more than one million acres in the Texas Panhandle, making it one of the largest in US history. It has devastated cattle ranches, killing thousands of cows and other animals and it has killed at least two people as it raced across dry grasslands and consumed homes.
State fire officials said on Monday that the dry, windy conditions that had fuelled the fire last week were likely to lessen in the coming days, potentially offering a reprieve to exhausted firefighters.
The firefighters are stretched across five active wildfires with a combined acreage of more than 1,2 million acres, according to the Texas A&M Forest Service.
The Smokehouse Creek fire was ignited on 26 February 2024 and it is not yet clear what started it. It spread around the town of Canadian, a cattle-country community of about 2 200 people northeast of Amarillo, near the Oklahoma border. Within a couple of days, the fire had spread across vast swaths of ranch lands in the Panhandle.
Some landowners have claimed that a downed electric pole had started the fire and at least one has filed a lawsuit against an electric utility saying so but state officials have not made any conclusions.
The fire has been burning across a sparsely populated area of Texas that is home to most of the state’s cattle: millions of cows, calves, steers and bulls. Its sprawling ranches are not always easily traversable by road.
Wildfires are nothing new for Panhandle ranchers, many of whom know how to transform their pickups into makeshift fire trucks to fight a blaze. But the scale of this fire is without precedent in Texas. In addition to the ranchers, residents of the small communities that dot the landscape, like Fritch and Canadian, have seen their homes, cars and churches reduced to rubble.
Two deaths have been connected to the fires so far. Joyce Blankenship, an 83-year-old woman living on the outskirts of Stinnett, perished in her home when flames overtook her property on 27 February 2024. Cindy Owen, 44, died from burns after flames surrounded her company truck the same day as she drove home to Amarillo from Oklahoma. She later died at a hospital.
Gov Greg Abbott said on Friday that early assessments suggested that about 400 to 500 structures in the region had been destroyed by the fire and he cautioned that the number could rise as surveys continued. Officials also said that several firefighters and other emergency workers had been injured.
Containment
The Smokehouse Creek fire was 15 percent contained as of Monday afternoon, the authorities said.
The rugged terrain of the Canadian River Valley, where the fire started, has been a major obstacle for firefighters because fire trucks cannot navigate some of the area’s cliffs, valleys and steep hills.
Rain helped to stall the fire’s growth last week, but warm, windy and dry weather returned over the weekend and a new fire burned about 300 acres next to Lake Meredith, about 40 miles north of Amarillo, before firefighters put it out.
On Monday, firefighters were checking for hot spots in places the fire had set ablaze, trying to ensure that it did not flare up again.
Even as fire officials were optimistic about the prospect of improved conditions this week, the National Weather Service said portions of the Panhandle remained under “elevated” risk of a fire.
What about the cattle?
The Panhandle is home to about 85 percent of the roughly 12 million cattle in Texas, said the state agriculture commissioner, Sid Miller. But most of them are kept concentrated in feedlots and dairy farms and those operations have been largely unaffected by the fires.
Still, wide swaths of the grassland that Texas cattle rely on for food have been charred. Thousands of cattle may have already died or been so injured in the blazes that they would have to be killed, Miller said.
Even those ranchers whose cattle have survived were left scrambling to find a place for their herds to eat. Scorched grazing lands means their surviving cows may starve if left alone. Miller said a rancher he knew had 1 500 head of steer but “no grass and no water” and was in a desperate situation, adding that the rancher may have to move the cattle across state lines.
The fire and smoke could also cause health problems down the road or lead pregnant cows to give birth prematurely.
For many ranchers, the tasks ahead feel gargantuan. They face burying dead cattle, mending broken fences and distributing bales of hay trucked in from hundreds of miles away.
Starting over will not be easy, ranchers say, as cattle prices have shot up amid dry conditions in recent years and interest rates remain high, making loans less appealing, especially as many ranchers are facing a stack of bills this time of year as they prepare for spring.
Is this fire unusual?
In most of Texas, wildfires happen in the summer. But in the Panhandle, the fire risk is highest around March, when temperatures rise, strong winds blow over the flat landscape and dry grass can easily catch fire.
Climate change is most likely making fire season start earlier and last longer by increasing the number of days in a year with hot and dry weather conditions that enable wildfires, said John Nielsen-Gammon, the Texas state climatologist and a professor of atmospheric science at Texas A&M University.
Temperatures in Texas have risen by 0,61 degrees Fahrenheit per decade since 1975, according to a 2021 report by the state climatologist’s office. The relative humidity in the Panhandle region has been decreasing as well.
More than 100 miles of power lines need to be rebuilt, one power company says
An electricity provider that serves seven Texas Panhandle counties said it will need to restore approximately 115 miles of power lines that were in the path of wildfires.
The North Plains Electric Cooperative assessed the damage caused by the fires that burned through several of its rural power lines, knocking out electricity to some customers, it said.
“Our lines serve the area surrounding (the city of) Canadian, and there is extensive damage around the outskirts of the town and in the rural areas all the way to Glazier," the company's general manager, Randy Mahannah, said earlier Wednesday. At least two of the company's employees have lost their homes in the fires, Mahannah said.
Sources: The New York Times, CNN
Firefighters in Texas are still battling the largest wildfire in recorded state history but they were hopeful on Monday that with cooler weather and less wind forecast for this week that they’d get an important break.
The fire, known as the Smokehouse Creek fire, has already scorched more than one million acres in the Texas Panhandle, making it one of the largest in US history. It has devastated cattle ranches, killing thousands of cows and other animals and it has killed at least two people as it raced across dry grasslands and consumed homes.
State fire officials said on Monday that the dry, windy conditions that had fuelled the fire last week were likely to lessen in the coming days, potentially offering a reprieve to exhausted firefighters.
The firefighters are stretched across five active wildfires with a combined acreage of more than 1,2 million acres, according to the Texas A&M Forest Service.
The Smokehouse Creek fire was ignited on 26 February 2024 and it is not yet clear what started it. It spread around the town of Canadian, a cattle-country community of about 2 200 people northeast of Amarillo, near the Oklahoma border. Within a couple of days, the fire had spread across vast swaths of ranch lands in the Panhandle.
Some landowners have claimed that a downed electric pole had started the fire and at least one has filed a lawsuit against an electric utility saying so but state officials have not made any conclusions.
The fire has been burning across a sparsely populated area of Texas that is home to most of the state’s cattle: millions of cows, calves, steers and bulls. Its sprawling ranches are not always easily traversable by road.
Wildfires are nothing new for Panhandle ranchers, many of whom know how to transform their pickups into makeshift fire trucks to fight a blaze. But the scale of this fire is without precedent in Texas. In addition to the ranchers, residents of the small communities that dot the landscape, like Fritch and Canadian, have seen their homes, cars and churches reduced to rubble.
Two deaths have been connected to the fires so far. Joyce Blankenship, an 83-year-old woman living on the outskirts of Stinnett, perished in her home when flames overtook her property on 27 February 2024. Cindy Owen, 44, died from burns after flames surrounded her company truck the same day as she drove home to Amarillo from Oklahoma. She later died at a hospital.
Gov Greg Abbott said on Friday that early assessments suggested that about 400 to 500 structures in the region had been destroyed by the fire and he cautioned that the number could rise as surveys continued. Officials also said that several firefighters and other emergency workers had been injured.
Containment
The Smokehouse Creek fire was 15 percent contained as of Monday afternoon, the authorities said.
The rugged terrain of the Canadian River Valley, where the fire started, has been a major obstacle for firefighters because fire trucks cannot navigate some of the area’s cliffs, valleys and steep hills.
Rain helped to stall the fire’s growth last week, but warm, windy and dry weather returned over the weekend and a new fire burned about 300 acres next to Lake Meredith, about 40 miles north of Amarillo, before firefighters put it out.
On Monday, firefighters were checking for hot spots in places the fire had set ablaze, trying to ensure that it did not flare up again.
Even as fire officials were optimistic about the prospect of improved conditions this week, the National Weather Service said portions of the Panhandle remained under “elevated” risk of a fire.
What about the cattle?
The Panhandle is home to about 85 percent of the roughly 12 million cattle in Texas, said the state agriculture commissioner, Sid Miller. But most of them are kept concentrated in feedlots and dairy farms and those operations have been largely unaffected by the fires.
Still, wide swaths of the grassland that Texas cattle rely on for food have been charred. Thousands of cattle may have already died or been so injured in the blazes that they would have to be killed, Miller said.
Even those ranchers whose cattle have survived were left scrambling to find a place for their herds to eat. Scorched grazing lands means their surviving cows may starve if left alone. Miller said a rancher he knew had 1 500 head of steer but “no grass and no water” and was in a desperate situation, adding that the rancher may have to move the cattle across state lines.
The fire and smoke could also cause health problems down the road or lead pregnant cows to give birth prematurely.
For many ranchers, the tasks ahead feel gargantuan. They face burying dead cattle, mending broken fences and distributing bales of hay trucked in from hundreds of miles away.
Starting over will not be easy, ranchers say, as cattle prices have shot up amid dry conditions in recent years and interest rates remain high, making loans less appealing, especially as many ranchers are facing a stack of bills this time of year as they prepare for spring.
Is this fire unusual?
In most of Texas, wildfires happen in the summer. But in the Panhandle, the fire risk is highest around March, when temperatures rise, strong winds blow over the flat landscape and dry grass can easily catch fire.
Climate change is most likely making fire season start earlier and last longer by increasing the number of days in a year with hot and dry weather conditions that enable wildfires, said John Nielsen-Gammon, the Texas state climatologist and a professor of atmospheric science at Texas A&M University.
Temperatures in Texas have risen by 0,61 degrees Fahrenheit per decade since 1975, according to a 2021 report by the state climatologist’s office. The relative humidity in the Panhandle region has been decreasing as well.
More than 100 miles of power lines need to be rebuilt, one power company says
An electricity provider that serves seven Texas Panhandle counties said it will need to restore approximately 115 miles of power lines that were in the path of wildfires.
The North Plains Electric Cooperative assessed the damage caused by the fires that burned through several of its rural power lines, knocking out electricity to some customers, it said.
“Our lines serve the area surrounding (the city of) Canadian, and there is extensive damage around the outskirts of the town and in the rural areas all the way to Glazier," the company's general manager, Randy Mahannah, said earlier Wednesday. At least two of the company's employees have lost their homes in the fires, Mahannah said.
Sources: The New York Times, CNN
