Texas Burns. Firefighters overwhelmed. 1 killed. Declared worst in state history.
30 replies, posted
[release]For weeks, Texans have watched and worried as fires of an intensity and breadth they’ve never seen rage across the state, scorching prairie land and suburbs and destroying hundreds of homes.
By Jay Janner
“Even though you hear about brush fires, wildfires, most of those are in farmland,” said Edward Lee, an Austin firefighter. “This, however, is mixed in through residential development, so it’s pretty scary.
“A lot of people are in shock.”
[b]So far this year, wildfires have charred 1.65 million acres across the state, the Texas Forest Service reported. That’s almost twice as much land as usually burns in Texas in a year.
The ravaged areas included, on Monday, 100 acres aflame in Austin and 325,000 acres from two fires in West Texas. Across the state, 30 to 40 fires were burning, said Marq Webb, public information officer for the Texas Lone Star Incident Management Team.[/b]
In Austin, “The area of town where this occurred, it’s a populated area but it’s also very wild, has a lot of green space and it’s hilly, so it’s very ripe for fires,”said Marty McKellips, CEO of the American Red Cross of Central Texas.
Police [b]arrested a 60-year-old homeless man in connection with the Austin fire and said he faces a felony charge of arson. They said he left a campfire untended.[/b]
“We’ve just been under siege,” said Holly Huffman, a spokeswoman for the Texas Forest Service in College Station. “We’re at historic dryness levels, and it’s expected to get worse before it gets better.”
She said the state forest service is fighting fires all the way from the Louisiana border to the mountains of West Texas, a distance of more than 500 miles.
One firefighter has died.
Gov. Rick Perry’s office said 244 homes have been destroyed this wildfire season. He asked President Obama to declare a major disaster, making Texas eligible for federal aid.
The wildfires began in March, and the last couple of weeks have been particularly bad, Huffman said.
[b]A combination of dry weather combined and high winds increases the threat, Webb said.
“We’ve had rates of spread here … up to eight miles an hour,” Webb said. “That’s two football fields a minute.”[/b]
In west Texas, firefighters were slowly gaining control of about 11 fires. Bulldozers were digging fire lines around homes and tanker planes were dumping water on flames, said C.J. Norvell, a public information officer at the Texas Forest Service post in Midland.
In Austin, the Southwest Hills Community Church opened up its doors on Sunday and the Red Cross operated a shelter there for people evacuated from about 160 homes.
In one tense moment, a representative of emergency responders read from his BlackBerry a list of addresses where occupants could not return that night because of the threat, said Bill Dorman, a Red Cross volunteer.
“It was kind of like winning a lottery — or losing a lottery,” he said.
All but one of the displaced residents found other places to stay and left the shelter, he said.
[b]One woman, though, had six cats with her, Dorman said. She was upset because she knew nothing about the condition of her home or a seventh cat she could not find. She spent the night in the shelter, her cats corraled in the bathroom. She later learned her house and the cat were fine.[/b]
[/release]
If anyone can take on these fires, it's gonna be Texans.
[url]http://www.usatoday.com/weather/wildfires/2011-04-19-Wildfires-weather-Texas.htm[/url]
[img]http://i.huffpost.com/gen/265726/thumbs/r-TEXAS-WILDFIRES-2011-large570.jpg[/img]
[img]http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/4dac7cba49e2ae043b030000/image.jpg[/img]
[img]http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/4dac7d5accd1d5394e020000/image.jpg[/img]
[img]http://cbsdallas.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/77459352.jpg?w=420[/img][img]http://www.dagleyinsuranceblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/110228-texas-fire-130a.jpg[/img]
declared worst state in history
when the fuck did all this start
[QUOTE=Nathax;29284840]declared worst state in history[/QUOTE]
Hey, Texas produced a headline that's completely correct for once.
Damn, thats really bad.
[url]http://www.aolnews.com/2011/04/16/105-year-old-cowboy-n-l-boss-winter-loses-homes-to-texas-wild/[/url]
[b]105-year-old Texan Cowboy loses home to fires[/b]
[release][b]When the Texas town of Abilene gathers Sunday on the square outside the senior center to celebrate the 106th birthday of local ranching legend N.L. "Boss" Winter, surely he'll remember his grandmother's half-dugout home, where he was born.
He'll remember the two-room house a half-mile away, where his family moved when he was just 5. He had already earned the nickname he's carried for more than a century because "by the time I was 4 years old, I was running the outfit," the Abilene Reporter-News reported.[/b]
Victor Cristales, Abilene Reporter-News
N.L. "Boss" Winter, 105, and his daughters, Marie Hogue, left, and Betty Rash Whigham, visit the burned remains of the home where he grew up in Stonewall County, Texas, on Tuesday. The home, which stood since 1910, burned in a massive wildfire last week.
And he'll remember the home around the corner where he and his wife raised their son and two daughters, while Winter also farmed, raised cattle and tended horses on his family's 1,400-acre Winter Estate ranch.
All three homes burned to the ground this week, along with his wife's family home, as massive wildfires spread through four counties in Texas. In Stonewall County, where Winter's ranch is located, more than 103,000 acres burned.
When he saw the ashes where his homes once stood, "he cried," his daughter Marie Hogue told AOL News today. "His lip quivered and he was almost in tears."
Winter was born on April 30, 1905. He lived on the plains of west Texas his entire life.
"He's such a legend here. He's a fixture at the cowboy reunions," Abilene Reporter-News reporter Celinda Emison told AOL News.
Winter visited the site where his homes once stood. All four houses were unoccupied at the time of the fires.
"When I see this, I think about home, sweet home," he said, as dust blew around his cowboy boots.
Winter told Emison about spending cool evenings as a boy on his family's back porch, his father playing the fiddle with the family's old spotted hound dog, Keno, at his feet.
"That dog would sit there and howl with my daddy," he said.
He remembered learning to wrangle horses at about age 12, breaking them for neighbors who paid him anywhere from $3 to $12 for each horse he broke.
When he was 13, Winter told the newspaper, he and his father traveled in a covered wagon as they moved all their horses and cattle on a trail north to Briscoe County because of a severe drought. Months later, the rains returned and the family moved back to the ranch, he said.
Winter's second wife, who turns 100 this year, also lost the home she lived in for 46 years to wildfire. The couple met after their spouses died; recently they celebrated their 20th anniversary.
Winter's birthday celebration, a cake and coffee event held outside the Abilene Senior Citizens Center, is always open to the town and usually held on the last Sunday of April. It was moved up this year because Easter Sunday falls so close to the end of the month, Hogue told AOL News.[/release]
[img]http://o.aolcdn.com/photo-hub/news_gallery/7/1/711988/1302988364730.JPEG[/img]
Hasn't rained for weeks.
[editline]18th April 2011[/editline]
[QUOTE=Nathax;29284840]declared worst state in history[/QUOTE]
Can't even get one post without starting this shit.
[editline]18th April 2011[/editline]
Also Houston and Dallas are [i]huge[/i]
[img_thumb]http://i.huffpost.com/gen/265726/thumbs/r-TEXAS-WILDFIRES-2011-large570.jpg[/img_thumb]
BBQ all you can eat.
Shit, I thought California had it worst last year.
hope they don't come to san antonio / helotes again.
i remembe when helotes was p. firey and it smelled like smoke miles away for a month or so
its because of Americas tolerance of flaming homosexuals :downs:
[QUOTE=Bomber9900;29285708]its because of Americas tolerance of homosexuals :downs:[/QUOTE]
This is what we get for letting flamers prowl free on our dry, brush-laden fields.
[QUOTE=Exploits;29285743]This is what we get for letting flamers prowl free on our dry, brush-laden fields.[/QUOTE]
The Flaming Homosexuals used their hot, gay fire to set Texas ablaze.
Been really dry lately.
I'm still waiting for some idiot to say "... and nothing of value was lost."
The other day the sky was brown from smoke. Ash was falling at my church.
I've barely seen my dad this week because of it.
[editline]18th April 2011[/editline]
[QUOTE=CabooseRvB;29284797][img_thumb]http://www.dagleyinsuranceblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/110228-texas-fire-130a.jpg[/img_thumb][/QUOTE]
I just realized the amount of Texas in this picture.
[QUOTE=DudeGuyKT;29285809]
I just realized the amount of Texas in this picture.[/QUOTE]
That's Ranger Walker's truck. He's lighting a cigarette with the flames up ahead.
[QUOTE=Psychokitten;29285794]I'm still waiting for some idiot to say "... and nothing of value was lost."[/QUOTE]
You're the only one to bring that up. Idiot.
:fireman:
I live in texas, and this shit is happening a lot now.
Yesterday i had to help evacuate my brother cause his subdivision was on fire.
10 houses burned completely down and 20 more were damaged, and 100 acres scorched a block from him.
The smoke was pretty bad. hell it started to rain ash from where we were
How the hell do they catch these people that start forest fires all the time?
Shit, I hope this doesn't spread too far, I live not too far away.
Sweet, those cows look like they will be cooked well.
Joking aside, this is bad and I hope the cows were saved.
I live in Texas, and I hope everyone is doing okay with this. Wildfires are kind of common where I live but they're not ever this bad. :ohdear:
[QUOTE=Nathax;29284840]declared worst state in history[/QUOTE]
Def how I read it
[QUOTE=OvB;29285006]
Can't even get one post without starting this shit.[/QUOTE]
oh no i can't comprehend humor help
[QUOTE=Nathax;29284840]declared worst state in history[/QUOTE]
It's great except for the fat conservative dumbfucks. There are about, maybe, 300,000 decent people tops in the state.
Not to mention without us, there would be no Lay's potato chips, or Dr Pepper. Two greatest things to originate within a fifty mile radius of Dallas.
Also, come to Austin. Here they allow women to go topless in public.
Its already stupidly hot out here. On top of this my college shut down my dorms air conditioning for the fear of the filters or some shit. So I'm boiling no matter where i am. Great $35,000 investment
There was a fire in Austin near Oakhill yesterday (or saturday, those days blur together). It wasn't horrible, but it was enough to make everyone stop outside on Congress Avenue and put their hand over their heart when someone drove by in a car with a megaphone yelling the news.
Run-on sentence
Anyway, it's not that bad in Austin, but I hope we put it out; I'm expecting another hot and dry summer what with Earth heating up
I honestly thought the news was about some housefire that killed a guy (because I'd think more would be dead). But shit man, fires aren't any fun.
[QUOTE=OvB;29285006]Hasn't rained for weeks.
[editline]18th April 2011[/editline]
Can't even get one post without starting this shit.
[editline]18th April 2011[/editline]
Also Houston and Dallas are [i]huge[/i]
[img_thumb]http://i.huffpost.com/gen/265726/thumbs/r-TEXAS-WILDFIRES-2011-large570.jpg[/img_thumb]
BBQ all you can eat.[/QUOTE]
It's gonna be a hot summer here. Already feels like July. Where are my April showers that bring May flowers?
Sorry, you need to Log In to post a reply to this thread.