Images taken from space reveal the scale of damage wreaked by the wildfires currently scorching the Texas Panhandle.
The pictures of the town of Fritch, Texas — 35 miles northeast of Amarillo — were taken by Maxar Technologies satellites on February 28, and are compared with pictures of the same areas in August 2023.
Fritch is currently being inundated by the Windy Deuce Fire, one of the five uncontained wildfires plaguing the panhandle. This fire has burned around 142,000 acres of land across Moore County and is only 30 percent contained, according to the Texas A&M Forest Service.
Update: the #WindyDeuceFire in Moore County is an estimated 142,000 acres and 30 percent contained. Crews continue to build containment line. Mandatory evacuations remain in place for Fritch. Acreage increase due to more accurate mapping, the Incident Information – Texas A&M Forest Service account posted to X, formerly Twitter.
Fritch was evacuated ahead of the blaze, with its population of nearly 2,000 being forced to leave their homes. Over 50 homes were destroyed in Fritch.
Today your Fritch Volunteer Fire Department mourns for our community and those around it. We are tired, we are devastated but we will not falter. We will not quit, the Fritch Volunteer Fire Department said in a Facebook post on Wednesday.
The largest of the wildfires is the Smokehouse Creek Fire, which is currently about 850,000 acres in size according to the most recent updates. For comparison, the entire state of Rhode Island is only about 989,000 acres.
The fire is only 3 percent contained, and is now considered the second-largest fire in Texas history, after the 900,000-acre East Amarillo Complex fire in 2006. It is also thought to be the fourth-largest ever across the whole U.S.
On Tuesday morning, the Smokehouse Creek Fire in Hutchinson County was only 40,000 acres in area, and on Wednesday morning it was 500,000 acres, so it is rapidly growing.
The other three active fires in the Panhandle Region include the Magenta Fire in Oldham County, which has burned 2,500 acres and is 65 percent contained, the 687 Reamer Fire in Hutchinson County, which is 2,000 acres in area and 10 percent contained, and the Grape Vine Creek Fire in Gray County, at 30,000 acres in size, which is 60 percent contained. These figures may change as the Texas A&M Forest Service update the information online.
These fires have destroyed numerous homes in Fritch and other nearby towns including Canadian, Miami, and Stinnett and have claimed the life of an 83-year-old woman named Joyce Blankenship in Stinnett, who died in her home. Thousands of people have been left without power, and thousands of ranch cattle have been killed in the blazes.
The hot and dry weather conditions that made the Panhandle the perfect tinderbox for these wildfires are expected to continue over the next few days, making it challenging for firefighters to stamp out the blazes.
Hot and dry conditions caused by high temperatures and windy conditions are expected to continue in the region in the coming days. These conditions could increase the potential for these wildfires to grow larger and more dangerous, Texas Governor Greg Abbott said on Tuesday as he issued a disaster declaration for 60 Texas counties.
