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Sixty county in the Texas panhandle have been issued with a disaster declaration as rapidly - spreading wildfire forced the evacuation of several Town and America ’s main atomic artillery warehousing quickness .
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott ( R ) issued the declaration on Tuesday ( Feb 28 . ) , activating emergency answer squad to fight the flack .
A Texas firetruck responds to a wildfire.
One of the blazing raged disconcertingly nigh to the Pantex Plant — the master adeptness which assembles and disassembles the U.S. nuclear arsenal — forcing the site to pause operations until further notice .
" The ardor near Pantex is not contain , " the companywrote on X , formerly Twitter , last night ( Feb. 27 ) . " reaction efforts have shifted to evacuation . There is a small number of non - essential personnel sheltered on - website . "
Pantex is located 30 mile ( 48 kilometers ) east of Amarillo , where the 16,000 - acre ( 6,500 hectares ) site has been the main assembly and disassembly detail for U.S. nuclear bomb since 1975 . The last bomb was progress there in 1991 , after which the installation dedicated itself to decommissioning older bomb in the nation ’s arsenal .
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Although the start point of the blazes persist obscure , Abbot attributed the fervour ' causeto " hot and dry conditions due to eminent temperatures and windy conditions , " which may continue in the following days . " These conditions could increase the electric potential for these wildfires to grow large and more dangerous , " Abbot add .
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Some of the fires have already swelled to historical scales , claiming house and farm animal . The largest , named the Smokehouse Creek Fire and located in Hutchinson County , has consumed more than 500,000 acres ( 200,000 hectares ) of grassland in Texas ’s Pandhandle region since it began on Monday ( Feb. 26 ) . It develop explosively overnight to become the secondly large in the state ’s history . The fire is 0 % contained , according to Texas A&M Forest Service .
Scientists expect extreme wildfire to become increasingly more probable due toclimate change — which is not only raising the risk of fires starting , but is also gallop the wildfire season , according to a 2023 study in the journalEarth ’s Future .
" Under a warmer future climate , we can see that the ardour danger will even be higher in the winter , " field lead - authorGuo Yu , a researcher at the Desert Research Institute , said in a statement . " This surprised me , because it feel counterintuitive , but climate change will alter the landscape in so many ways . "
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