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Wednesday, January 30, 2008

High winds spread Texas wildfires

We had high winds yesterday morning, gusting to over 50mph that began overnight. An RV collided head-on with an 18-wheeler in South Texas earlier that morning, killing the truck driver, burning the two RV owners (51 and 57 years old) and killing their black Labradors.

And then this morning I read that a wildfire that began in Oakalla burned 2500 acres. That's just ten miles from town! All that dead grass burned black...luckily no livestock or people perished in this fire, and no structures were lost. Thirteen neighboring fire departments helped extinguish the fire. There were also fires elsewhere across the state, five in Central Texas alone. Governor Rick Perry declared 152 counties for emergency funding. (Texas has 254 counties)

And the fire season hasn't officially started yet!

The winds died down by the afternoon. I tried to keep my driving to a minimum, busy most of the time with office-related errands. I did get blown a foot or two while walking at lunch. People were holding on to their hats. I held on to my van's doors when I opened them, so that they didn't slam into the doors of the vehicles parked next to me.

http://www.kdhnews.com/news/story.aspx?s=22536
http://caller.com/news/2008/jan/30/massive-brush-fire-rages-near-falfurrias/
http://caller.com/news/2008/jan/29/trucker-is-killed-in-crash-with-rv/
http://chron.com/disp/story.mpl/chronicle/5495323.html
http://foxnews.com/story/0,2933,326426,00.html
http://star-telegram.com/news/story/439568.html

South Texas continued with a few more persistent fires a few days later:
http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/articles/fire_84024___article.html/county_thursday.html

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