By JACK DOUGLAS JR. and BILL HANNA
Star-Telegram (Texas)
Panhandle firefighters spent a second day Monday battling hot spots in the worst series of wildfires in Texas history.
Since Sunday, wildfires have claimed at least 11 lives, injured more than a half-dozen people and scorched at least 697,000 acres, officials said.
Some small-town Panhandle residents were allowed to return home Monday, but evacuation orders remained in effect for others.
Emergency crews from North Texas and neighboring Oklahoma on Monday fought a blaze along Interstate 40 near the small community of Shamrock in Wheeler County that had spread over 220,000 acres by midday.
Another wildfire, which had scorched 45,000 acres, continued to burn in Cottle County, moving north into Childress County, said Carrie Atchison of the Texas Forest Service.
The largest fire, which spread through 432,000 acres Sunday and scorched the outskirts of Borger, had “laid down a little bit” — but not before it killed three residents who were overrun by the flames, Atchison said.
“This is the worst set of wildfires that has ever occurred in Texas history. The fires up there are completely unprecedented,” said Atchison from the Forest Service’s headquarters in Granbury.
In Hutchinson County, where Borger is located, County Judge Jack Worsham assessed the day-after damage Monday.
“We got about 150,000 acres of black country,” Worsham said. “It isn’t pretty.”
Worsham said four homes burned to the ground, another 16 outbuildings were destroyed and an untold number of cattle were killed.
Strong wind gusts rendered firefighters nearly helpless Sunday, Worsham said.
“I don’t think it would have made any difference if there had been 100 fire departments out there,” he said. “It was way out of control.”
By Monday afternoon, the three Panhandle wildfires had burned 697,000 acres, more than double the area scorched in 1988, when the “Big Country” wildfire burned 326,000 acres in and near the West Texas town of Albany.
About 6 p.m. Monday, Roberts County sheriff’s officers found four bodies in a car that had run into a ravine. Authorities were still trying to learn the cause of the wreck but believed it was fire-related, said state Trooper Daniel Hawthorne with the Texas Department of Public Safety office in Childress.
Sunday morning four people were killed in a nine-vehicle pileup on a smoky stretch of I-40, just east of Groom, Hawthorne said.
Authorities were not immediately made aware of the collisions because of the chaos caused by the fires.
“The smoke was so thick, nobody could see anything,” Hawthorne said.
Killed in one vehicle were Susan Louise Schumacher, 49; Lawrence Schumacher, 56; and Alexis Burroughs, 14, all of Grove, Okla., the DPS said. The Schumachers’ daughter was taken to a Lubbock hospital.
In another vehicle, Karen Lachelle DeWeese, 46, of Wagoner, Okla., was killed, her husband severely burned, and their son hurt, Hawthorne said.
A short time later, three firefighters were injured, one seriously, when their firetruck overturned near the accident scene, Hawthorne said.
A ranch hand helping firefighters was hospitalized with second-degree burns, he said.
Rerouting of traffic from parts of smoke shrouded I-40 and U.S. 287 caused a 700-vehicle traffic jam in Clarendon, he said.
“I saw a lot of people get out of their cars and visit each other, but I had nobody get irate with me, saw nobody throwing a fit,” Hawthorne said. “I think everybody realized the seriousness of the situation.”
In Borger, three people were killed Sunday when a fast-moving fire nearly engulfed the town of 14,000. Two of the victims were found just outside their home.
“They were near their house, outside, and the fire just overran them. I guess they were trying to get away,” said Borger fire Capt. Mike Galloway.
A third person was killed in the vicinity, Galloway said. “I don’t know the exact circumstances, but it was definitely fire-related,” he said.
Authorities believe the fire near Borger was sparked at the 6666 Ranch by power lines feeding oil field equipment, said Chief Calvin Nickell of the Fritch Volunteer Fire Department.
Xcel Energy reported power outages in about 2,200 homes and businesses throughout the Panhandle. Repairs and power restoration could take three to four weeks, said company spokesman Bill Crenshaw.
Officials were still uncertain what started most of the wildfires. The Panhandle has had just two-tenths of an inch of rain since early March, more than an inch below average.
On Monday, Jan Amen of the Texas Forest Service said: “It’s still very smoky, but things are looking better.”
“Our incident commander is optimistic we can get these fires under some degree of control because the conditions have improved from Sunday.”
The National Weather Service forecast for the Panhandle calls for the high winds to subside today, but dry and windy conditions are expected to resume Wednesday.
In North Texas, no red-flag warnings, signaling the worst fire conditions, are expected the rest of the week, said Jessie Moore, a National Weather Service meteorologist.
This weekend’s forecast includes a chance of rain Saturday and Sunday.
“It’s still several days out, but it looks like a good chunk of Texas could get good rains,” Moore said.
This report includes material from The Associated Press.
DEVASTATION AND AID
697,000 Acres burned
373 Firefighters deployed statewide
47 Bulldozers available statewide
7 Towns evacuated at the height of the wildfires
45 miles by 15 miles Width and length of the Borger wildfire, the largest one in the Panhandle