Officials from the Central Texas county of Bastrop asked more than 250 families to evacuate their homes Tuesday night after a wildfire ignited and burned through 783 acres as of Wednesday morning.
The wildfire, now known as the “Rolling Pines Fire,” is raging on in an area east of the city of Bastrop, in the Bastrop County State Park. A spokesperson for the Texas Forest Service, Kari Hines, said in a press conference Wednesday morning that the fire is only 30% contained.
No homes have been damaged, and no injuries have been reported. However, Hines did note that the fire threatens at least 100 homes.
Hundreds of firefighters from dozens of agencies, including the Texas A&M Forest Service and the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, have been working continuously to contain and extinguish the fire.
“We know that our operation crews last night were able to make very good progress constructing containment lines with our heavy equipment, the bulldozers,” Hines said. “We also had multiple fire engines throughout the residential areas patrolling and mopping up, which is an operation where they seek out heat near our containment lines and extinguish it.”
Local officials told reporters that they were unsure what sparked the fire. However, Carter Smith, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department executive director, said he “absolutely believes” that embers from a 150-acre planned fire on Tuesday ignited it.
Smith added that planned fires are critical in preventing wildfires.
The Texas Parks department began the planned burn at 10:30 a.m. Tuesday, Smith said. Bastrop County Judge Paul Pape said fire officials followed the set criteria for planned burns.
“Based on everything they knew this morning, it was an appropriate day to burn,” Pape said. “None of us can predict the weather more than 15 minutes ahead of time, and sometimes things happen that we just don’t anticipate.”
According to the National Weather Service, winds in the area ranged from 15 to 25 mph on Tuesday, with gusts ranging from 30 to 40 mph.
Pape emphasized that planned burns work as “a tool to help prevent wildfire.” A lack of planned burns in the park, according to Pape, can allow the forest to grow “like a jungle” and create conditions that contribute to wildfires.
A crew of trained and certified wildland firefighters was present during Tuesday’s planned burn.
The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department said in a Facebook post that there were three “burn boss(es)” present “with a large culmination of prescribed fire experience in [the] Lost Pines ecosystem and tens of years of research, education and training.”
“Each unit has a specific prescription of environmental factors that need to be met before we can go ahead with a prescribed fire. The moisture in the vegetation, relative humidity, and wind speed throughout today are within the prescription needs that we have for the unit today,” Parks and Wildlife Department officials said in a comment.
There was no burn ban in Bastrop County on Tuesday, but there was one in neighboring Travis County.
At noon on Tuesday, the Texas A&M Forest Service sent out a notice warning of the day’s increased risk for wildfires due to the warm, dry and windy forecast. At 2 p.m., the service announced it was responding to the Rolling Pines Fire.
At that time, the fire was estimated to have burned around 150 acres, and the Forest Service requested air assistance to help out.
By 3:40 p.m., the fire had spread to about 300 acres with 0% contained. At 3:48 p.m., the Forest Service ordered a flight restriction over the area to allow firefighting aircraft open access to battle the fire.
Several nearby roads were closed off. The Bluebonnet Electric Cooperative announced it had been asked by the Bastrop County Office of Emergency Management to shut down “power lines serving 348 members in an area along Texas 21 to ensure the area is safe for emergency crews and residents.”
The wildfire comes just a few months after the tenth anniversary of the Bastrop Complex wildfire of 2011, also in the Bastrop County State Park area. The 2011 wildfire was the largest in Texas state history, burning through more than 34,000 acres, destroying nearly 1,700 homes, causing hundreds of millions of dollars in damage, and killing two people.
Officials in a Tuesday press conference noted that the conditions of this fire are not as severe as the 2011 wildfire.
Wednesday’s weather was expected to help firefighters. Cold winds blew through the area around 5 p.m., followed by a strong cold front.
Despite the Rolling Pines Fire being classified as less severe than the 2011 fire, Judge Pape still said he is “personally frustrated that we’re having to go through this.”