Dempsey wildfire in Palo Pinto County, Texas burns thousands of acres
The Dempsey wildfire in Palo Pinto County grew from 6,500 acres burned Saturday to 11,598 acres and has been 27% contained as of Monday.
The fire started on June 23 in private farmland between Palo Pinto Highway and northbound FM Road 4. It is unclear what started the fire.
The fire had grown about 40 times larger than the initial blaze as of Monday but has not affected any structures, according to the Texas A&M Forest Service.
Angel Portillo, public information officer for the Texas A&M Forest Service, said 285 personnel were on the site to fight the blaze Monday. The forest service used aviation, bulldozers and tankers to create a containment zone.
The area received precipitation over the weekend. Although it was not much, Portillo said it can be a big help.
“We did have a storm that came through yesterday,” Portillo said Monday. “There were some lighter winds, the purpose of the precipitation creating high relative humidity, which is allowing us to keep the area moist, and allowing the fire to kind of slow down, allowing the crews to get in there and doing some mopup, identifying some hotspots and mitigating those areas.”
Portillo said one thing to look out for when it comes to precipitation is lightning and making sure new fires don’t start.
“There was one single tree that got hit southwest of the fire. But it was just outside of that. And it was the locals who took care of that,” Portillo said. “There might be a tree that’s on the edge of where we have a containment line. If it hits a tree, just outside the containment, it (a fire) just starts.
“It might not because of the rain and everything — it might not go like this fire. But if hits it in the containment area and might still have some heat inside of the fire, and that once it dries off, and the sun starts coming out, that’s when you start seeing everything,” he said.
Fire officials initially closed down northbound FM Road 4 to non-residents for evacuation. The road is now open.
