Firefighters gain some control over deadly Texas blaze (Reuters)

AUSTIN (Reuters) ? Firefighters on Wednesday gained ground for the first time in their days-long battle against a monstrous and deadly wildfire southeast of Austin, officials said.

The 34,356-acre Bastrop County Complex fire, which has caused the evacuation of some 5,000 people in the rural community, was about 30 percent contained and that number was expected to grow throughout the afternoon, said Mike Fisher, the county's emergency management coordinator.

"We're feeling like we're gaining enough control that we're not going to lose a lot more acreage today," Fisher said. "Perhaps today, we'll have the perimeter secure and the fire will not get larger."

The fire has killed two people and claimed 785 homes, the most ever destroyed by a single fire in Texas history, the Texas Forest Service reported Wednesday morning.

County officials have given a lower number of homes destroyed. Fire service officials said they're not sure why the discrepancy but that the assessments are continuing.

Firefighters who have fought the blaze since Sunday were helped overnight by decreased winds and cooler temperatures, conditions expected to continue today, officials said.

All of this is cold comfort to William Clements. He learned Tuesday that his home in Bastrop is one of those lost to the massive fire.

"It was kind of a shock when we came up and saw that it was gone," he said. "But we are recovering from the shock, and landing on our feet."

The Bastrop County fire, the largest current blaze, stretches 24 miles long and 20 miles wide at its widest point. It is one of nearly 200 fires that have broken out across Texas in the past week, officials said.

A list of 243 homes confirmed destroyed was posted for residents to check at the county's shelters and in a command center, but it only accounted for a fraction of the houses officials say have been burned.

FEMA ON THE GROUND

The U.S. Forest Service has sent a team to the area to help coordinate the efforts, which include nearly 400 firefighters, and Federal Emergency Management Agency officials are on the ground assessing the damages.

Also assisting are about 100 members of Texas Task Force 1, an elite wide-area search team that will be combing "every inch" of the enormous fire zone, Fisher said.

"Essentially, the mission is to find whatever's out there that we need to deal with," Fisher said.

"If we have environmental hazards out there, ecohazards out there, dead animals. You've got to understand that we need to have some experts out there that are equipped and trained to deal with whatever hazards are there."

The team was used on site after the New York City 9/11 attacks and after Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.

A DC-10 air tanker contracted by the federal service and capable of carrying 12,000 gallons of retardant to drop onto the flames -- four times the normal capacity for retardant bombers -- landed in Austin on Tuesday night and will fly on Friday after it takes a federally mandated break, said Warren Bielenberg, information officer with the Texas Forest Service.

The craft is leased through a private company in California and had been used in other fires in the U.S. before arriving in Austin, he said.

It had not yet been determined Wednesday whether the DC-10 would be used in Bastrop or sent to other sites in Texas, officials said. That will depend on what the fire needs are over the next few days.

So far, four people have died in the Labor Day weekend fires, including a mother and infant daughter who died in northeast Texas on Sunday.

Wildfires sweeping across drought-stricken Texas have destroyed more than 1,000 homes and forced thousands of evacuations in the last several days.

More than 3.6 million acres in Texas have been scorched by wildfires since November, fed by a continuing drought that has caused more than $5 billion in damage to the state's agricultural industry and that shows no sign of easing.

(Additional reporting by Jim Forsyth; Editing by Jerry Norton)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/us/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110907/us_nm/us_texas_wildfires

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