Texas Wildfires

Arloest · Postby **Arloest** » Wed Dec 28, 2005 7:58 am

Yeah, OK. Today, Tuesday December 27th, I went up to Arlington Texas (located in North-Central Texas) to go to this theme park called Six Flags Over Texas. OK. But today was an unusual day for the area of the country. The strangest occurance I saw was a part of the track of one of the coasters (that I was JUST ABOUT to ride D:<) going up in smoke, all of the sudden. I thought this was EXTREMELY odd, I never heard of part of a track catching fire before. But it turns out, the grass below the track caught fire, which caused the track to set fire. Also, by mid afternoon, we saw a huge cloud of smoke rising from the southwest, not too far away at all. And by late afternoon, the sky had an orange-ish glow. I was getting a little curious as to what was going on. It turns out that cloud of smoke was one of the many blazes around the southern great plains that was responsible for the death of an elderly woman.  <table border='0' align='center' width='95%' ><tr><td class='quotetop'>Quote: </td></tr><tr><td class='quotebody'> Wind-Driven Grass Fires Kill One in Texas By MATT CURRY, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 59 minutes ago KENNEDALE, Texas - Fires fueled by dry brush and driven by gusty wind raced across parts of Texas and Oklahoma on Tuesday, killing at least one person, damaging scores of homes and forcing the evacuation of a small town. In Cross Plains, a town of about 1,000 people 150 miles southwest of Dallas, at least 25 homes and a church were burned and residents evacuated. "All day today there was so much smoke it was like nighttime," rancher Dean Dillard said. Gov. Rick Perry deployed state firefighters and issued a disaster declaration after at least 73 fires were reported burning in the northern and central parts of the state. "It's like trying to stop a 30-mph car coming down the street," Texas Deputy Fire Marshal Keith Ebel said. "The wind is the worst enemy right now." Drought and windy conditions help set the stage for the wildfires, which authorities believe were mainly set by people ignoring fire bans and burning trash, shooting fireworks or tossing cigarettes on the crunchy, brown grass. In Cooke County, near the Texas-Oklahoma border, an elderly woman was killed, said Texas Forest Service spokeswoman Traci Weaver. No details were available. In Oklahoma, the biggest fire burned at least 400 acres in a rural area near the town of Mustang, southwest of Oklahoma City. After the flames passed, residents emerged and were "watering their yards and standing in their yards," said Harold Percival, who lives about a mile from the Mustang fire. "It just kept jumping. I've never seen anything like it," said Hankins' friend, Maria Vantour-Smith. They were able to remove a few antiques and other items from the home before it was gutted. At least two Oklahoma firefighters were being treated for smoke inhalation or heat exhaustion, authorities said. In Texas, at least three firefighters were hospitalized with smoke inhalation and heat exhaustion, authorities said. In Oklahoma City, a child suffered minor burns on his hands when a shed caught fire. That blaze was apparently started by children playing with fireworks, Oklahoma City Fire Maj. Brian Stanaland said. In Texas, blazes were sparked the same way in Granbury and Kennedale, communities south of Forth Worth. "We've had warm temperatures, no moisture, low humidity and winds, so any little spark and man it just goes," Stanaland said. Fire burned across Bryan County in southeastern Oklahoma. The most severe blaze destroyed at least three structures near Achille and resulted in an unknown number of injuries, mostly from smoke inhalation, said Tim Cooke, the county's emergency management director. "Our entire county is just about on fire," Cooke said. "It's everywhere." Smoke from other grass fires reduced visibility along Interstate 35, forcing officials to close a stretch of the highway in southern Oklahoma near the Texas line. It reopened Tuesday evening. The wind in Oklahoma was clocked at 25 to 35 mph, with gusts as high as 40 mph. In Texas, Fort Worth Fire Department Lt. Kent Worley said crews had fought nine brush fires during the first half of the day and he expected more. His department also helped battle a blaze in nearby Kennedale, where two apartment complexes were evacuated. "It looked like the world was on fire," said Arlington Battalion Chief David Stapp, whose department joined others in fighting the wind-blown blaze. "There were flames 30 to 40 feet high, just a wall of flames." In Hood County, a fire near Canyon Creek forced at least 100 people to evacuate, said Chief Deputy Jerry Lind. He said several structures were on fire, and propane tanks had exploded. </td></tr></table>  From Yahoo! News.

Zaaphod · Postby **Zaaphod** » Thu Dec 29, 2005 2:16 am

Wildfires suck. All those high winds aren't helping matters any. <img src='http://definecynical.mancubus.net/forum ... ns/sad.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='sad.gif' />  <table border='0' align='center' width='95%' ><tr><td class='quotetop'>Quote: </td></tr><tr><td class='quotebody'> 4 Killed, More Missing In Rampaging Texas Wildfires POSTED: 6:24 pm EST December 28, 2005 UPDATED: 7:03 pm EST December 28, 2005 CROSS PLAINS, Texas -- By the time the smoke cleared Wednesday, about 100 homes across wildfire-stricken Texas and Oklahoma lay in ruins and at least five people were dead, including two elderly women trapped in their homes by the flames. The hardest-hit community during Tuesday's blazes was Cross Plains, a West Texas ranching and oil-and-gas town of 1,000 people some 150 miles from Dallas. Cross Plains also lost about 50 homes and a church after the flames raced through grass dried out by the region's worst drought in 50 years. Two elderly women there were killed after being trapped in their homes, said Sparky Dean, a spokesman for the Department of Public Safety. And in Callisburg, near the Oklahoma line, another woman apparently fell and broke her hip and could not get out of her home before it was destroyed, firefighters said. No information was immediately available on the fourth death in Texas. A fifth person was killed in Oklahoma. "We had a tornado here years ago and we thought that was devastating. This lasted for hours and hours," said Patricia Cook, a special education aide whose Cross Plains home was saved by her 18-year-old son, J.D., and a friend. They saw the flames approaching the house from across a field and ran to save it. "The fire was literally nipping at their heels," she said. "He just picked up the hose and started watering things down." Elsewhere on her block, the front brick wall and part of a side wall were all that were left standing of the First United Methodist Church. The steeple lay across the ground. Ten other homes on her street also were reduced to charcoal. Teresa Kennedy stood with her two children Wednesday outside her mother's home, destroyed in just minutes the day before. She and her seven siblings had left their home untouched since their mother's death six years ago. "There's nothing," a tearful Kennedy said of her childhood home, a mix of brick and wood. Most of the homes destroyed in Cross Plains were modest, working-class houses built during the 1930s and '40s. The fire spared a town landmark, the nearly century-old house - now a museum - of Robert E. Howard, author of the "Conan the Barbarian" books. All together, the grass fires destroyed more than 100 buildings across Texas, including 78 homes, the state emergency management agency said. Two dozen more homes were reported destroyed in Oklahoma. Wind gusting to 40 mph drove the flames across nearly 20,000 acres in the two states. At least 73 blazes were reported in Texas over two days, and dozens more broke out in Oklahoma. Fires were still smoldering Wednesday in four Texas counties. One new fire broke out Wednesday in an isolated area of eastern Oklahoma but was quickly contained. Severe drought set the stage for the fires, which authorities believe were started mostly by people shooting off fireworks, tossing cigarettes or burning trash in spite of bans imposed because of the drought. A fallen power line apparently started one Oklahoma blaze. Rainfall this year in the Dallas-Fort Worth area of North Texas, where most of the fires broke out, is about 16 inches below the average of about 35 inches, National Weather Service meteorologist Alan Moller said. "The last time we had something quite this bad, you got to go back to about 1956, when we had 18.55 inches," Moller said. The weather service's long-term forecasts show the drought intensifying through early 2006. Oklahoma has received about 24 inches of rain this year, about 12 inches less than normal. Copyright 2005 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.</td></tr></table>

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