Wildfires Burn 100 Homes in Okla., Texas

[Mom23boys]

By SHEILA FLYNN Associated Press Writer
The Associated Press

CROSS PLAINS, Texas Dec 28, 2005 — By the time the smoke cleared Wednesday, about 100 homes across wildfire-stricken Texas and Oklahoma lay in ruins and at least four people were dead, including two elderly women trapped in their homes by the flames.

The hardest-hit community during Tuesday's blazes was Cross Plains, a West Texas ranching and oil-and-gas town of 1,000 people some 150 miles from Dallas. Cross Plains also lost about 50 homes and a church after the flames raced through grass dried out by the region's worst drought in 50 years.

Two elderly women there were killed after being trapped in their homes, said Sparky Dean, a spokesman for the Department of Public Safety. And in Callisburg, near the Oklahoma line, another woman apparently fell and broke her hip and could not get out of her home before it was destroyed, firefighters said.

"We had a tornado here years ago and we thought that was devastating. This lasted for hours and hours," said Patricia Cook, a special education aide whose home was saved by her 18-year-old son, J.D., and a friend. They saw the flames approaching the house from across a field and ran to save it.

"The fire was literally nipping at their heels," she said. "He just picked up the hose and started watering things down."

Elsewhere on her block, the front brick wall and part of a side wall were all that were left standing of the First United Methodist Church. The steeple lay across the ground. Ten other homes on her street also were reduced to charcoal.

Teresa Kennedy stood with her two children Wednesday outside her mother's home, destroyed in just minutes the day before. She and her seven siblings had left their home untouched since their mother's death six years ago.

"There's nothing," a tearful Kennedy said of her childhood home, a mix of brick and wood.

Most of the homes destroyed in Cross Plains were modest, working-class houses built during the 1930s and '40s. The fire spared a town landmark, the nearly century-old house now a museum of Robert E. Howard, author of the "Conan the Barbarian" books.


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We are having grass fires here in Central Texas too. Some have been started by someone plawing his fields. The ground got too hot and caught fire. That is how bad it is here. There is no need to turn on the heat because it is in the high 70's or low 80's. This is the worst it has been in years. We are in a bad drought. Most of Texas is in the drought. Everyone is praying for rain.

[Pepper]

This is really sad. The fires aren't real far from us. We are in such a drought and could really use some rain!!