Texas aflame

The Wife is from Bastrop, so the last few days have been quite stressful for us. The entire state, it seems, is on fire, with power lines, broken glass, cigarettes and open grills sparking all manner of wildfires whipped up dangerously by the remnants of Tropical Storm Lee. That storm may have flooded the southeast, but it sent absolutely no rain to tinder-dry Texas. Instead, it sent dry, 30 mph winds. Very, very bad winds.

Sunday brought word of a fire in my hometown of Columbus, which we'd visited just the day before. Then word of the Bastrop fire came out. Bastrop, home of the "Lost Pines" forest, turned into a huge blaze very quickly with the parched pines going up like Roman candles. Most of Bastrop State Park is gone, as is the Texas Parks & Wildlife headquarters there. Tahitian Village, a sprawling subdivision where The Wife had many, many friends growing up, is close to a total loss. Not an hour has gone by without word of another friend's childhood home being destroyed. My mother-in-law evacuated her home near Camp Swift on Sunday. Thankfully, the fires haven't reached it as of yet. As long as the winds don't push the fires west, we may be spared the devastating loss so many others have suffered. Latest reports peg losses at nearly 500 homes. That kind of devastation is close to incomprehensible.

The Texas Forest Service has an update page here, and WunderMap shows a pretty good visual footprint of the various fires and their smoke cover, while the Texas Forest Service map has information about containment and other details if you click on the individual fire. KXAN has a list of donation sites and other things people can do to assist with this crisis. Stay safe, people.

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