More Texas Wildfire Pictures

More pics of the wildfires in Texas. Some rain has fallen and has helped in some areas, but they are still a long way from being fully under control or completely out.
FYI, this isn't dial up friendly.
Texas Wildfires

I'll admit, I'm not a firefighter and don't know the particulars, but in like picture 14 and 15, why don't they put some dozers in front of the fire and cut a fire line? Looks fairly level and not much brush to have to grub and cover up. One dozer could get a lot more done than 15 guys with shovels like they show in a later picture. Just wondering.

I agree , get dozers working . Dozers were used all the time 50+ yrs ago.
But this is the "green" way of fighting fires , Don t dare upset the Eco system or mom nature . So what if homes and cattle are lost!? We are saving the planet at some very unlucky peoples expense. Bring on the heavy equipement .

The music or the site title just doesn't sound appropriate. Don't know why everyone seems to think all videos need to have music. Guess its a "young" thing.

been a fire fighter for 40 years but can not for the life of me under stand why they are in front of the fire??? you always fight wild land fires from the rear or in the black start on the right flank and move counter clock wise. was out west three years ago and seen a lot of fires being fought from the unburned side. it's no wonder you read about fire fighters dieing in wild land fires.yes i do under stand that it is a very large area and they might not have the man power to make a real stand on the fires and the small towns might not have very good fire departments or eq.

I am a retired FF and I made my living on wildland fires for 34 years. Think about it lumpy, you are looking at a still picture and it is easy to have the perfect plan to deal with this fire under those conditions. But it isn't that easy in a moving wind driven fire. Dozers are not like Tonka toys that you just pick up and move around where ever you see the need. It takes time to move dozers, you need the right amount too, one dozer acting alone would be useless at the least and deadly at the worst. You need engines and crews to finish after the dozers go through. If a dozer has mechanical trouble, runs up against too steep of a slope, the fire spots behind them, or out in front of them, the fire is gone.

Remember there are many many fires going in TX right now, the wind is kicking, and information is not getting out fast enough, to have the right resources at the right place. These are not your everyday back yard fires, these are massive campaign fires with people in management from all over the country who are not as knowledgeable of the local conditions, terrain and resources as the local fire department may be. Independent action by single resources get firefighters killed.

We used to get all kinds of suggestions from well meaning civilians. "Put up a line of rainbirds and the fire will be put out by the water sprinklers, use heavy artillery to shoot water balloons at the fire. Bomb the fire with explosives like Red Adair does to blow out oil wells. This is not a new science. Large wildland fires are fought like a large military battle with plans, logistics, and operations. And, believe it or not safety of the firefighters and the public are the first though and responsibility of all firefighters. Some fires are not safe to fight at the time the photographers are shooting their pictures. The best time to fight these fires is at night when the humidity is up and the winds are down. That is when the most success with the least risk is.

Oleclint, here is a list of resources that are assigned to the Possum King complex in TX as of yesterday. Note the number of dozers:

Hand Crews: 23

Fire Engines: 122

Helicopters: 108

Dozers: 250

Water Tenders: 11

Overhead: 230

Total Personnel Assigned: 790

Sorry guys if you think I am going off on you, I just have been there and done that too many times.

I had about an $8,000,000(total cost to fight) wild fire go through my property last year. You can make a fire break with cats but you have to be way, way ahead of the fire. Even then a wild fire can jump the fire break. Sometimes you have people in charge of a fire that don't have a clue what they're doing. 3 cat operators almost lost their life's on my property last year because of a couple reasons. One cat just had a canopy and the flames went right over his machine. If I didn't have some cleared land that they could get to, he didn't think they would have made it out. They only went about 100 yds. into a treed section before the fire was right on top of them. What went wrong?

1. The 3 cats were sitting on trailers at the intersection 1 mile away for 4 hours! They were hoping the existing fire break would hold, it didn't.
2. They didn't start to drive the cats down the road to my land until after the fire jumped the fire break. They could have drove the trucks and trailers down and saved a lot of time. I had lots of room for trucks to get in and out. Even better, they could have the cats on my property 4 hours earlier.
3. When the cats are moving, they aren't in top gear going 7 mph. They're going about 3 or 4 mph tops. That's why need a lot of head time. The cat owners don't want to have replace undercarriage anymore than anyone else does. The fire was moving a lot faster than 4 mph.
4. When the cats finally got onto my property, there was heavy smoke and they should have stopped in the big clearing I have.
5. A gung ho person from the county tried to be a hero( and put 3 peoples lives in jeopardy). Sustainable resources were in called in and put in charge because they have the expertise in wild fires. The person from the county took a course on being a fire boss which puts him in charge of telling the cats where to go. It does not give him authority to send the cats in though. He gets direction from the fire chief who gets it from sustainable resources who are flying around in helicopters tracking the fire. This moron ignored all that and told the cats to go further into my property to start a fire break when the fire was less than 5 minutes away!!! He sent them in a treed area and never even consulted me about the property. I was spraying down my 5th wheel trailer and an area near the edge of the fire from a 2000 gallon water tank with a gas pump. The cats went in and came back out by where I was about 15 minutes after they were told to go in.

The guy in charge from sustainable resources reamed out the county fire chief about the moron that that almost sent 3 people to their grave. Apparently, the moron was severly reprimanded but not fired??? If ever there was a reason to be fired, that would be it!!! I kicked the news media out without any interviews but could have gave a doozy. It's not easy fighting a wildfire but having incompetant people in place makes it a lot worse.

why dont they just let it burn ? its all scrub ground anyway and the grass will grow back better.