Texas Panhandle wildfires leave scorched homes and animals in their wake. The land is now 'like a moonscape.'

Fire perimeters last updated March 1 at 9:50 a.m. C.T. Historical fire perimeters, 1960 to March 2023.
(Map by Renée Rigdon, CNN, from National Interagency Fire Center data)

Last week's cluster of Texas Panhandle wildfires left a swath of scorched earth, animals and homes across what would become a land mass bigger than the state of Rhode Island. Known as the Smokehouse Creek Fire, its "flames moved with alarming speed and blackened the landscape across a vast stretch of small towns and cattle ranches," report Sean Murphy and Jim Vertuno of The Associated Press.

Hemphill County Emergency Management Coordinator Bill Kendall "described the charred terrain as being 'like a moonscape. ... It's just all gone,'" Murphy and Vertuno write. "Kendall said about 40 homes were burned around the perimeter of the town of Canadian, but no buildings were lost inside the community. Kendall also said he saw 'hundreds of cattle just dead, laying in the fields.'"

The fire has claimed 50 lives and "has now torched more than 1 million acres in Texas alone, making it the largest fire on record in the state," report Joe Sutton, Steve Almasy, Holly Yan, Robert Shackelford and David Williams of CNN. "The blaze had also charred more than 31,500 acres in Oklahoma. . . . Altogether, the fire is among the largest in the Lower 48 since reliable record-keeping began in the 1980s."

While the fire's origins remain unclear, "strong winds, dry grass and unseasonably warm temperatures fed the blazes," the Post reports. Texas A&M Forest Service spokesperson Adam Turner told CNN, "Wind was coming straight out of the north and made just this massive wall of fire moving across the landscape." A lawsuit filed by a woman whose home was destroyed by the fire claims that "an improperly maintained power pole fell and started the fire," CNN reports, "The Texas A&M Forest Service is investigating the fire and has not announced a cause."

Many Panhandle fires continue to burn. "The Texas A&M Forest Service said that the Roughneck Fire's forward progression had been halted, and it was 50% contained as of yesterday afternoon," CNN reports. Containment in Oklahoma showed good progress; Oklahoma Forestry Services spokesperson Keith Merckx told CNN, "The Smokehouse Creek Fire perimeter looks good and will be turned back over to local departments on Tuesday."