Wildfires sweeping across West Texas destroyed dozens of homes, the Associated Press reported, forcing evacuations and closing an interstate after heavy smoke caused a fatal accident Sunday.Winds driving the fire were not expected to lessen overnight.
The fires blackened almost 88,000 acres and destroyed 58 homes from the Texas Panhandle to the southern plains. Heavy smoke from a wildfire near Midland, about 330 miles west of Dallas, was blamed for an eight-vehicle accident along Interstate 20 that killed a 5-year-old girl. The roadway was shrouded in smoke when a tractor-trailer hit the pickup truck she was riding in, said Trooper John Barton of the Texas Department of Public Safety. A man and another child were injured.
One firefighter suffered second-degree burns fighting a blaze near Colorado City, about 250 miles west of Dallas, but no other injuries were immediately reported. The largest fire burned about 30,000 acres in the Panhandle northeast of Amarillo, destroying 27 homes and damaging seven others, Kearney said.
If you are camping anywhere around the hill country, be extremely careful with campfires as the windy conditions can pick up a spark and set the dry brush into a wildfire in short order.
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