An unknown number of homes and other structures were destroyed or damaged in Hutchinson County, according to local emergency officials. Pantex, the main facility that assembles and dismantles the U.S. nuclear arsenal, suspended operations Tuesday night before indicating it would reopen as normal Wednesday.
Republican Gov. Greg Abbott issued a disaster declaration for 60 counties as the largest fire, the Smokehouse Creek Fire, burned nearly 1,200 square kilometers (nearly 470 square miles), according to the Texas A&M Forest Service. That’s more than double its size since the fire broke out on Monday.
Authorities have not said what might have caused the fire, which devastated sparsely populated counties surrounded by plains.
The weather forecast gave firefighters some hope: lower temperatures, less wind and the possibility of rain on Thursday. But at the moment, the situation was tough in some places.
“Texans are urged to limit activities that can generate sparks and take precautions to keep their loved ones safe,” Abbott said.
The Pantex plant, northeast of Amarillo, evacuated its non-essential personnel Tuesday night “as a precautionary measure,” said Laef Pendergraft, spokesman for the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Production Office at Pantex, during a press conference Tuesday night. Firefighters were on the scene, he added.
The plant, long the main U.S. atomic bomb assembly and disassembly center, completed its last new bomb in 1991 and has dismantled thousands of weapons since then.
The center tweeted Wednesday morning that the plant “is open for normal day shift activities” and that all staff were to report according to their assigned schedule.
In Borger, a town of about 13,000 people north of Pantex, Hutchinson County emergency officials planned to organize a convoy to take evacuees from one shelter to another in anticipation of power outages and nighttime temperatures below 0 degrees Centigrade (around 20 degrees Fahrenheit).
As the number of evacuation orders grew, local and regional officials gave information live on Facebook and tried to answer questions from frightened neighbors. Authorities asked the population to activate emergency alerts on their cell phones and be ready to evacuate immediately. Some roads had fire on both sides and resources were at their limit, they added.
People took to Facebook to ask about their streets and communities in hopes of finding good news, but often the response was that either the area had suffered damage or there was still no news about the situation.
Texas state Sen. Kevin Sparks said Canadians, a town of about 2,000 people about 100 miles (160 km) northeast of Amarillo, had been ordered to evacuate. Later Tuesday, Hemphill County police urged anyone still in Canadian to shelter in place or in the high school gym because roads were closed.
Evacuations were also ordered in other towns northeast of Amarillo. Fire officials across the state line in Durham, Oklahoma, urged people to evacuate.
At least some residents of the small Hutchinson County town of Fritch were ordered to leave Tuesday afternoon because another fire had crossed a highway.
Source: With information from AP
