At least one person has died in the wildfires raging across the Texas Panhandle.
83-year-old Joyce Blankenship, a former substitute teacher, was found dead in her destroyed house in Hutchinson County, officials said.
The Smokehouse Creek fire is now the largest in state history, burning 1,075,000 acres alone, according to the Texas A&M Forest Service. It is now the second-largest fire in US history, local fire officials said.
“This is now both the largest and most destructive fire in Texas History,” the West Odessa Volunteer Fire Department posted on Facebook. “It is also the second largest wildfire in US History.”
Five wildfires are currently spreading across the Texas Panhandle, burning more than 1.2m acres of land in total. These fires prompted evacuations and destroyed dozens of homes.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott issued a disaster declaration for 60 counties on Tuesday as the fires grew.
In Potter County, the spread of the Windy Deuce fire caused the Pantex Plant — America’s main facility for assembling and disassembling nuclear weapons — to briefly close on Tuesday night. The plant resumed normal operations Wednesday morning.
Dry and windy conditions amid unseasonably warm temperatures fuelled these fires.