U.S News

AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) – Texas Gov. Rick commodore wanted added federal support in battling wildfires crossways his drought-parched land as a woodland brightness gutted at least sextet homes on Sun and threatened hundreds more in Austin, the land capital.

An estimated 1.5 million acres of tinder-like applier and grasslands hit gone up in flames in Texas since Jan 1, most half of that during the time hebdomad lonely low whatever of the driest conditions in Texas history.

Some 220 homes in every hit been lost, according to a letter free on Sun from commodore to President Barack Obama requesting a federal disaster declaration.

One firefighter was killed on Friday in Eastland, Texas, most 80 miles south of Fort Worth.

"As wildfires move to anger crossways our state, Texas is reaching its power to move to these emergencies and is in requirement of federal assistance," the controller said in a statement.

Flames hit blazed most fiercely for the time couple of weeks in West Texas, where a dozen wildfires hit charred thousands of acres of unstoppered rangeland and prompted ranchers to move hundreds of thousands of cattle to safer pastures.

Fires hit also unnatural hundreds of agricultural Texans from their homes crossways the state. But Austin, in bicentric Texas, marked the largest and most hard populated municipality placed in harm's artefact so far.

By Sun afternoon, the brightness there had scorched 80 acres of tree and juniper woodlands in the southwestern crossway of the capital, an Atlantic titled Oak Hill, flanked by residential subdivisions and a accord college.

Six to 10 homes were destroyed within hours of the fire's outbreak on Sunday, and most 100 more were evacuated as digit U.S. Air Force load planes dumped blast retardants over the area, connected by a water-dropping helicopter.

"It does hit the chance to get into the canopies of those trees and display whatever pretty beatific burning lengths," Texas Forest Service spokesman Jim Carse told Reuters. "There's hundreds of homes, several assorted neighborhoods, that are in the Atlantic that are threatened."

It was not immediately clear how the blast started.

About 160 miles away in north-central Texas, the municipality of Strawn, accumulation 764, was evacuated as a 1,000-acre wildfire winking in on the area. solon than 30 homes in the Atlantic already were destroyed during the time week, blast officials said.

The brightness advancing on Strawn was conception of a assemble of fires that burned 45,000 acres around Possum Kingdom Lake and then merged. Wind-whipped flames had managed to move portions of the lake, blast aggregation officer Steve Deffibaugh said.

(Corrects positioning of Austin in 7th paragraph)

(Reporting by Elliott Blackburn; Writing by Steve Gorman; Editing by saint Bohan)

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