Texas fires continue to burn out of control with weekend weather forecasting worse conditions: Live

Strong winds and low humidity will hit the Texas Panhandle this weekend, mirroring the same conditions in the region when several of the blazes started.

“Critical fire weather conditions are expected to return midday Saturday and once again after sunrise Sunday,” the National Weather Service for Amarillo said. “Please refrain entirely from outdoor activities that generate sparks or flames.”

Earlier this week, strong wind gusts and very dry grasses helped fuel these fires — including the Smokehouse Creek blaze, which is now the largest in state history and still only 5 per cent contained.

A Hutchinson County official reminded residents that some cities in the Panhandle are being protected from fires by volunteer-based departments.

“I want to kind of reiterate in Fritch and Stinnett, both are volunteer-based fire departments,” a spokesperson with the Hutchinson County Office of Emergency Management said Thursday afternoon. “So these people do not have to do that. That’s them just doing what they feel like they need to do for their community.”

Both cities were hit hard by the fires scorching 1.2m acres in the Texas Panhandle this week.

An official with the Hutchinson County, Texas Office of Emergency Services said prescribed burning helped prevent this week’s fires from becoming worse.

“You can see where we did our prescribed burns previously, how, thankfully, our wildland team did that, because that saved a lot of people’s properties,” the spokesperson said on a Facebook live video. “I know we couldn’t save everything.”

Late last year, Texas officials conducted a prescribed burn in Hutchinson County, which prevented this week’s fires from spreading into the southern parts of the town of Borger, CNN reports.

Prescribed burns are fires intentionally set in controlled areas to destroy fire fuels like dried-out grass and leaves. Indigenous communities have used this practice for millennia and have long advocated for the US government to adopt it in fire-vulnerable areas.

A second death has been confirmed in the raging wildfires in Texas that have become the biggest blaze in the state’s history.

Cindy Owens, believed to be in her 40s, from Amarillo City in Potter County was confirmed dead by officials on Thursday.

She was driving in Texas‘s Hemphill County south of Canada and got out of the truck for an unknown reason and “the fire simply overtook her”, according to Sergeant Chris Ray of the Texas Department of Public Safety told NBC.

The Magenta Fire in Oldham County, which is covering an estimated 3,300 acres, is now 85 per cent contained, according to an update from the Texas A&M Forest Service.

“Firefighters continue to patrol and mop up across the fire area, checking for heat near containment lines,” the forest service said. “Dozer crews are widening and improving these lines.”

Joyce Blankenship, 83, was found dead in her Stinnett, Texas home on Wednesday as wildfires ravaged the region. She was a beloved mother, grandmother and former substitute teacher, say her relatives.

Blankenship’s grandson, Lee Quesada, told the Associated Press that local deputies told his uncle they had found her remains in her burned home on Wednesday.