TEXAS \u2014 The Ross Fire is now 57% contained, however as of Tuesday it’s still burning, scorching more than 90,000 acres.<\/p>\n
The Texas A&M Forest Service says it\u2019s the largest summertime wildfire in Texas since statewide records began in 2005.<\/p>\n
The Forest Service says the Ross Fire has destroyed 167 structures \u2014 including 18 occupied homes \u2014 and damaged 95 more.<\/p>\n
The fire has required hundreds of firefighters, dozens of engines, heavy equipment and aerial resources.<\/p>\n
Texas lawmakers approved about $630 million for the Texas A&M Forest Service during the last legislative session, including funding for wildfire suppression aircraft, equipment, volunteer fire departments and prescribed fire.<\/p>\n
But researchers say conditions on the ground are a big part of why these fires can grow so quickly.<\/p>\n
\u201cTexas often has a dry, hot, windy weather like this summer, the dry grass and vegetation provide a lot of fuel for wildfires, and the strong wind helps the fire propagate very fast,” said Yunyao Li, assistant professor at the University of Texas at Arlington.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Texas A&M Forest Service says wildfire potential remains high across much of Texas because of ongoing drought.<\/p>\n
The agency says it has responded to more than 1,000 wildfires this year, burning more than 300,000 acres.<\/p>\n
The Ross Fire remains active as crews continue working to increase containment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TEXAS \u2014 The Ross Fire is now 57% contained, however as of Tuesday it’s still burning, scorching more…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":429694,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[1061,2160,5201,132,134,133,1570,102,223,1571,1225,82,27,1569,2053,835,172],"class_list":["post-429693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-app-public-safety","tag-app-top-stories","tag-app-weather","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news","tag-ctv","tag-dallas","tag-news","tag-nicolette-perdomo","tag-public-safety","tag-san-antonio","tag-texas","tag-texas-what-you-need-to-know","tag-top-stories","tag-vod","tag-weather"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=429693"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429693\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/429694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=429693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=429693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=429693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}