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About 1,400 homes destroyed in destructive Texas wildfire

08 September 2011 20:03 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. A destructive wildfires in the Texas county of Bastrop has so far destroyed some 1,386 homes, the most homes destroyed in a blaze in Texas history, APA reports quoting Xinhua.

The fire in Bastrop, some 50 kilometers from Austin, was about 30 percent contained on Thursday, after burning for more than three days, local media quoted county officials as reporting.

The new estimate of the homes burnt in the Bastrop fire is the countyâ€™s "best estimate" of the nearly 34,000-acre fire that has been raging since Sunday, said Bastrop County Emergency Coordinator Mike Fisher.

The blaze forced the evacuation of at least 5,000 people and killed at least two people.

About 7.2 million acres of grass, scrub and forest had been burned in wildfires across the U.S. so far this year.

In Texas alone, wildfires, fanned by dry air, high winds and severe drought, had destroyed some 3.5 million acres of land.

The Texas Forest Service reportedly responded to more than 60 new fires over the weekend that scorched nearly 33,000 acres of land. The Bastrop fire is the largest of them.

Firefighters are battling more than three dozen fires that are burning across the state, consuming 120,000 acres and forcing thousands of people to flee their homes, according to media reports.