ALBAWABA - For the past couple of days, wildfires have been eating at millions of acres across the southern state of Texas, with at least one person killed.
Wildfires burning across north Texas reportedly killed an 83-year-old woman, as firefighters battled to contain one of the state's largest blazes, which burned property and forced evacuations.
The massive fire, which expanded due to strong winds and unusually warm temperatures, has already burned over 850,000 acres (344,000 hectares). About 60 miles (100 kilometers) to the east, in the town of Canadian, which houses about 2,300 people, there were "quite a few homes burned," Mayor Terrill Bartlett told CNN, but "luckily, no one was severely injured".
The Texas A&M Forest Service said that the Smokehouse Creek Fire in Texas' panhandle, a flat northern area noted for its prairies and tiny communities, was only three percent contained.
According to CNN meteorologist Chad Myers, the fire was traveling at a speed of two football fields per second. More than one million acres have been destroyed by the state's five wildfires, all of which are located in the panhandle. An additional 18 fires had been put out as of Wednesday night.
The National Weather Service in Amarillo, the region's largest city, warned Wednesday that cool temperatures "with weak winds" were predicted, which authorities hoped would help them combat the flames.
Authorities in Borger released photographs of burning regions that had been destroyed by fire, including several burned-out buildings.
Town officials said they had opened a shelter for individuals who had been displaced, and evacuation orders were issued for much of the adjoining town of Fritch, where significant sections of the area had lost power and water.
"I don't think a lot of folks that live in the Fritch area are probably going to be prepared for what they're going to see as they pull into town," Hutchinson County Emergency Management spokeswoman Deidra Thomas said in a Facebook video update earlier in the day.
