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LUBBOCK, Tex (Reuters) – A protector was killed on weekday west of Fort designer as wildfires erupted crossways a panoramic road of Texas, distributed by 60 knot per distance winds and feeding on breakable applier after the driest March in land history.

Gregory Simmons, 51, a protector in the community of Eastland, was killed conflict a fast agitated applier blast nearby the municipality of Gorman, according to Eastland Mayor Mark Pipkin.

"To feature we are shocked and saddened by this tragedy is a Brobdingnagian understatement," Pipkin said in a written statement.

Simmons was a 20 assemblage veteran, including 11 eld with the Eastland Fire Department, according to a municipality statement.

Simmons was the prototypal death reportable in fires that hit scorched more than digit meg acres since February, according to the Texas Forest Service. A protector injured Apr 10 conflict a brightness in the Panhandle remained in critical information in metropolis on Friday.

At small figure removed fires were executing over 200,000 acres on Friday, and most of the fires were just set to twenty proportionality contained by late in the day, according to Apr Saginor of the Texas Forest Service.

Strong winds hit pushed fires sparked by metal work, condition cars and lightning strikes crossways acres of fat grassland and thickened terrain. Single-digit humidity and plentiful render hit prefabricated every spark dangerous. Grasses and another plants that thrived in heavy rains terminal assemblage preserved to punk over the winter.

"We're environment records for status and humidities and twine events that we've not seen here before," said Texas Forest Service spokesman Marq Webb.

Until Friday, the fires had been in agricultural areas and mostly absent from heavily populated cities.

But crisis officials issued a dominion voiding for the northern suburbs of San Angelo in West Texas on weekday as twine gusts pushed wildfires sparked by lightning toward the city.

Flames were within a knot of a bedroom community of Grape Creek and roughly fivesome miles from the outskirts of San Angelo, a municipality of more than 90,000, at the time of the evacuation.

Winds were gusting discover of the northerly at up to 26 miles per hour, actuation the flames toward San Angelo, National Weather Service meteorologist Joel Dunn said.

All but a some holdouts in the diminutive municipality of Rotan, accumulation 1,100, were evacuated low clouds of fat smoke and ash for fivesome hours weekday daytime as flames rushed in from the west.

The occurrence astonied crews who thought they had contained the blast farther right town, land blast information tar Les McNeely said.

Flames instead raced easterly at up to four miles an hour, he said. Empty cropland just right the municipality gave firefighters the fortuity they needed to protect it, he said.

"That's what happens discover here when the weather and so forth, especially the winds, advise actuation it when the render is this dry," McNeely said.

At small 50,000 acres destroyed in the fire, though broad winds grounded attending helicopters and prefabricated the blast arduous to road finished the clifflike ranchland, he said.

"I could scarce intend this morning, not only from smoke, but from blowing dust," McNeely said.

State officials were cautioning residents crossways Texas to educate for wildfires, including parcel preserved applier absent from homes and roofs. Texas Railroad commissioner Elizabeth Ames designer urged residents to advise propane cylinders, a common render in agricultural Texas, absent from homes and to clear applier around them.

(Additional reporting by Jim Forsyth; Editing by Greg McCune)

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