Smokehouse Creek Fire burns through Texas Panhandle, spares some communities

CANADIAN -- Now named the largest wildfire in Texas History, the Smokehouse Creek Fire continued to burn Thursday in the Texas Panhandle and into Oklahoma. Although areas south of the fire in Amarillo and Borger received snow, there has been no known impact yet on this fire from the precipitation.

The fire, which has now consumed 1,075,0000 acres across northern Texas and into Oklahoma, is still only 3% contained, and this was one of four wildfires still active in the Texas Panhandle as of Thursday, according to the Texas A&M Forest Service. Other fires include the Grapevine Creek Fire in Gray County, which has burned 30,000 acres with 60% containment; the Windy Deuce Fire in Moore County with 142,000 acres with 50% containment; and the Magenta Fire in Oldham County, with 2,500 acres burned with 65% containment. The Texas A&M Forest Service said the 687 Reamer Fire had burned into the Smokehouse Creek Fire, adding to the acreage Thursday.

Burning perilously close to Miami and Canadian along Highway 60 and around Highway 33, the fire spared the main areas of most of both cities while burning hundreds of acres surrounding the area. Hemphill County emergency officials told the Associated Press that about 40 homes were burned around Canadian's perimeter, but no buildings were lost inside the community. In Canadian on Wednesday, the Red Cross had set up at a local church, and food trucks from Amarillo including Yolos and Tank's Burgers along with members of Gruver High School were assisting with feeding those affected by the fire.

"It is not lost on us, while viewing the burn scar, how remarkably close the Smokehouse Creek Fire came to directly impacting the citizens of Gray County and the City of Pampa," the Pampa Fire Department said in a social media post. "While we pause to count our blessings, though, we are immediately overwhelmed with sorrow for our neighboring communities. The scope of the devastation remains to be determined; however, we know that lives have been forever changed by these events."

Juan Rodriguez, a public information officer for Texas A&M Forest Service, spoke about the work of the agency and the status of the Smokehouse Creek Fire outside of the courthouse in Canadian.

He said the fire originated about 50 miles north of the area and continued to travel east to the outskirts of Miami and Canada. He said that the sudden wind shift from the cold front started to endanger the areas around Skellytown and Borger.

“We had our crews today over in Skellytown building containment lines and utilizing the better weather with lower winds to be able to put in better containment lines,” Rodriguez said Wednesday evening.

Rodriguez said that containment lines are barriers, natural or manufactured, placed around the fires to prevent them from spreading.

“We are using bulldozers, motor graders and fire engines to take away fuel from the actively burning fires to create a break in the fuel to the fire,” Rodriguez added. “The last couple of days with the high winds, the fire was making a hard push. It was hard to put in containment lines with the speed at which the fire was moving. We could not keep up with the fire with the wind gusting up to 60 to 70 miles per hour. Once the wind shifted, the whole trajectory of the fire was impacted.”

He said that with winds not blowing as hard that firefighters and other services will work to put in more containment lines, which will restrict the path fo the fire.

“We are definitely going to try to take advantage of this downtime in the weather to put in more containment,” Rodriguez said. “With the winds being as low as they will be the next couple of days, we will try to use that to our advantage to put out the fire with anticipation that the winds will be picking up greatly this weekend.”

According to Rodriguez, the high winds the region has experienced, coupled with greater fuels in the area, like brown dry grass, from lack of rain, fueled the speed and size of the fires.

“Really dry grass paired with hot warm conditions that we have had with the high winds, it really helped this fire move extremely far and fast in a short time,” Rodriguez said. “The fire is continuing to head east; the head of the fire has gone into Oklahoma with winds pushing it somewhat south.”

Over 80 personnel from the Texas A&M Forest Service are involved in reducing the impact of the fire with 25 bulldozers, a motor grader and a couple of fire engines. Among interstate mutual aid, about 11 strike teams with about 200 people and about 60 engines are involved in fighting the fire.

According to the Texas A&M Forest Service Thursday, they were bringing in six single-engine air tankers, two larger tankers and a Blackhawk helicopter to assist the state effort.

Addressing how the multiple state agencies work together to fight the fire, Sean Duggan from the Texas A&M Forest Service talked about the teamwork involved from all these entities needed in such a massive fire.

“All fire agencies through the country work together, and with these fast-moving fires with aircraft that was grounded due to high winds, we have to rely on seeing where the fire is going to be, notifying the communities that are impacted, issuing evacuation orders, and then coordinating with those communities and their response," Duggan said. "With the winds the way they were and the rate of the fire, we knew it was going to go into Oklahoma, so we had to coordinate our efforts. A fire this big is a national deal.”

Rodriguez stressed that with conditions such as these, the public needs to do its part in proactive, safe prevention habits.

“Whenever we get these outbreak days, we need to pay attention to the weather and to the red flag warning that comes into effect,” he said. “Be prepared to evacuate if you live in one of these areas that could be impacted by wildfires. Have a go bag set up to go with personal belongings, medication and priceless items and have a plan for yourself, your family and pets if you have them.”

This article originally appeared on Amarillo Globe-News: Texas wildfires including Smokehouse Creek burn Panhandle