Over the past week, wildfires in the Texas panhandle have killed at least two people and destroyed 1.3 million acres of land – and there’s still no end in sight.
- Of the five fires currently burning in the area, Hutchinson County’s Smokehouse Creek Fire is the largest, having burned through 1.1 million acres alone, according to Texas A&M Forest Service. As of early Monday, the blaze was just 15 percent contained, fire officials say.
Since the fires began, as many as 500 homes and businesses have been destroyed, leaving “nothing but ashes on the ground,” says Governor Greg Abbott. "We have people who don't have a home, don't have a place to go to,” Abbott says. “And we as Texans need to collaborate together. We need to work on the process of finding immediate and temporary housing for these individual people."