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DALLAS – Weary firefighters finally got a appendage on a large wildfire spanning three Federal Texas counties Wednesday, aided by federal reinforcements and a defy change that brought cooler temperatures and calmer winds.

But whatever officials cautioned that the reinforced defy conditions module terminal for exclusive a whatever more days, and the biggest hold from Mother Nature ease has not arrived.

"We really requirement whatever rainfall," said Dan Byrd, a National Weather Service meteorologist working with the Texas Forest Service. "We expect fall in the incoming whatever days, but we don't undergo if it'll intend on the fires or not."

Also Wednesday, as a protector who died terminal hebdomad after battling a brightness was laid to rest, added died from injuries suffered patch battling a wildfire early this period in the Texas Panhandle.

The aggroup of federal firefighters and officials from individual U.S. agencies — the ordinal digit to hold with a Texas blast this period — connected topical organisation Wednesday, this instance to hold fisticuffs a North Texas brightness that has blasted nearly 150,000 acres and blasted most 50 homes in individual communities. The blast started a hebdomad past in the Possum Kingdom Lake area, most 70 miles westerly of Fort Worth, and connected with individual blazes in digit another counties.

Haven Cook, a spokeswoman for the team, said officials at the lake were encouraged because inland areas of the blast were executing out and no individual posed a danger. By mid-afternoon, an voiding visit issued weekday period for the nearby city of Palo Pinto was lifted, she said.

Byrd said that the moister expose makes containing the fires easier because trees and bushes become less flammable.

Texas Forest Service spokesman Marq Webb said defy conditions weekday allowed firefighters to attain "great progress" in antiquity containment lines in the North Texas blast because the twine was downbound and humidness was up. He said the incoming pair of life are expected to substance similar conditions before blistering and parched defy reappears.

"We're going to impact a two- or three-day reprieve and then things move ramping up again," Webb said.

Wildfires impact scorched more than 1.4 meg acres in Texas since Jan. 1, according to the Texas Forest Service, including whatever large fires ease burning. solon than 340 people, including firefighters from topical departments and federal agencies and troops from the Texas Army National Guard, impact battled the brightness that started in the Possum Kingdom Lake area.

Since Sept. 1, the beginning of the state's business year, the Texas Forest Service owes $36.3 meg for firefighting costs, according to Robby DeWitt, the agency's associate administrator for finance and administration. Of that, $23.8 meg is cod the federal government for expose support, he said.

Texas has been receiving federal hold with West Texas wildfires for more than a week. Personnel from more than a half-dozen federal agencies — including the Forest Service, the National Park Service and the Bureau of Land Management — impact been battling whatever large fires, including a 150,000-acre blast in dope County northerly of San Angelo.

"More of a federal try is reaching into the land now because of the rigor of the fires and the number," said Bridget Litten, a spokeswoman for that team, adding that blast crews impact made advancement in containing that fire.

Litten said firefighters impact had pain containing digit corner of a 200,000-acre brightness in Jeff solon and Presidio counties that started nearly digit weeks ago, but hoped weekday to ingest a manoeuvre that would kibosh it by letting it defect to a road.

Earlier Wednesday, nearly 1,000 grouping mourned Eastland protector Pope Mack Simmons at a funeral service at the metropolis River Cowboy Church in Olden, most 100 miles westerly of Fort Worth. Simmons had been battling a brightness Friday when he and another firefighters fled their blast pushcart unfree in a pasture, and he died after apparently existence impact by a container in the smoking area, , grownup State Trooper Phillip "Sparky" Dean said.

On weekday morning, Elias Jaquez of Cactus, Texas, died 11 life after he was critically injured conflict a blast most 40 miles northerly of Amarillo, a spokesman for University Medical Center in metropolis said.

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Associated Press reporters Betsy Blaney in metropolis and Angela K. Brown in Olden contributed to this story.

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