Posted: Sat, 25 Jun 2011 09:55 AM - 13,553 Readers
By: Angela K. Brown
Hurricane season has reached the Gulf Coast, but electronic signs along Houston's freeways have been warning of extreme wildfire danger.
This is among the latest oddities in what has become the state's worst wildfire season, where out-of-control blazes have charred nearly 5,100 square miles from arid West Texas to the thick East Texas woods near the Louisiana border. But fires also have surprised residents in some southeastern towns where rainfall and humidity usually dilute such threats by spring.
Now, with bone-dry conditions extending into the summer and a severe drought plaguing nearly all of Texas, authorities face the challenge of educating even the least fire-prone communities about how easily the blazes can start.
The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms unwittingly caused a 150-acre blaze in May while detonating explosives in a Panhandle dirt field, even though a fire truck was nearby because agents knew about Motley County's burn ban. No homes were damaged.
But dozens of homes in Austin and in several towns an hour's drive from Houston have been destroyed in wildfires sparked by a homeless man's campfire, a barbecue pit or bullets from hunters' target practice, despite widespread and well-publicized burn bans now affecting all but a couple dozen of the state's 254 counties.
"This didn't have to happen," said Sarah Bustamante, 29, who was evacuated from her Plantersville home last weekend after someone's barbecue pit ignited a large blaze in Grimes County northwest of Houston. "The rules are in place for a reason, and from that one little oversight or whatever, it upset nature and a whole lot of lives."
The Texas Forest Service has been promoting fire prevention efforts across the state through meetings, billboards and posters. Local authorities have done similar efforts, and Austin police officers visited homeless camps to warn about open burning after a homeless man who allegedly left eggs cooking unattended was charged with arson. The 100-acre fire in April destroyed nearly a dozen homes in Austin's outskirts.
"In years like this, it's critical to know what the causes are and to focus on what people can do to prevent fires, and it's important that we leave no leaf unturned," said Justice Jones, a fire prevention manager for the Texas Forest Service.
He said state fire officials meet with residents after determining a county's main cause of wildfires — such as arson in East Texas, debris burning in South Texas and lightning strikes in West Texas.
"We think folks are listening, and that there's a growing awareness," Jones said.
Bustamante has tried to do her part in Grimes County, where burn ban signs are posted in parks, stores and even some stop signs. At a recent birthday party for a friend's 1-year-old at a state park, the group roasted hot dogs on an electric grill and ate chili heated in a crock pot plugged into outlets at a pavilion.
"Some people at the party were from out of town and said, `Why are we doing this?' We told them there was a burn ban and we couldn't grill," said Bustamante, who has four children and two stepchildren. "Everybody around here knows the drought has been so bad, and they've been taking the burn ban seriously."
This season few areas of Texas have escaped the devastation being blamed in four deaths — including three firefighters battling separate blazes.
An April house fire led to the second-largest wildfire in state history — a nearly 315,000-acre blaze in three West Texas counties that narrowly missed the Fort Davis Historic Site, a frontier Army cavalry fort, and the McDonald Observatory, a top astronomical research facility. In fact, seven of the state's 10 largest wildfires occurred this spring — including the nearly 127,000-acre, three-county blaze that destroyed about 160 homes around Possum Kingdom Lake, a picturesque community 70 miles west of Fort Worth.
The Texas wildfire season that starts in November usually wanes in the spring because of rain, greener vegetation and higher humidity, said Victor Murphy, a climate expert with the National Weather Service in Fort Worth. But the state's wettest months — April through June — were anything but this year because of the lingering La Nina weather condition that causes below-normal rainfall.
Despite recent rains that poured across many of the state's latest wildfires, federal statistics show 71 percent of Texas remains in exceptional drought — the most severe category — and 21 percent is in extreme drought.
The National Interagency Fire Center calls for above-normal wildfire potential through September in the Southwest, including Arizona and New Mexico where blazes have raged in dried-out forests and grasslands.
Texas has not seen such a severe wildfire season since 2006, when blazes charred about 2 million acres, left 12 people dead and destroyed more than 400 homes. The state's largest fire ever started in the Panhandle in March 2006 and grew to more than 907,000 acres.
Unless significant rain falls during the sweltering summer heat, experts predict the state could be in for more destructive blazes.
"Things are tinder dry," Murphy said, "so it doesn't take much to get things started."
