Since the Labor Day wildfires of 2011, many communities have begun taking it upon themselves to make their homes safer in the event of another wildfire. One of those places is Steiner Ranch, a planned community near Lake Travis, in the Hill Country outside of Austin. Recently a group of volunteers, firefighters and residents got […]
This weekend marks a year since massive wildfires tore through Central Texas, burning more than 1,600 homes, killing two people, and uprooting countless lives. Over the course of the last year, KUT News and StateImpact Texas have been collecting stories from the people who lived through the fires and reporting on some of the causes, […]
All this week we’re bringing you stories on the 2011 Labor Day Wildfires that destroyed over a thousand homes in Central Texas. On Monday, we looked at some of the complications that led to the fire beyond the well-known heat and drought. Later today, we’ll bring you a story of a narrow escape from the Pedernales […]
While extreme heat and devastating drought have held much of the blame for the fires, there’s a bigger picture.
How the extreme heat and drought made trees vulnerable to attack.
During Texas’ worst wildfire season on record last year, more than 16,000 emergency responders and firefighters came to the Lone Star State to help battle the blazes. Today the Texas Forest Service announced that they’re going to send some of their own to help fight the Little Bear Fire near Ruidoso, New Mexico. That fire has […]
They were part of the wildfire-fighting force that helped push back Texas’ worst year of fires in history, and now they may be leaving the state’s armada. The U.S. Air Force wants to move eight C-130s from Fort Worth to Montana. But Texas feels differently. As Era Sundar of StateImpact Texas lead station KUT reports, […]
Early estimates say between 100 and 500 million trees were killed by the drought. Now the Texas Forest Service plans to take a closer look.
Add another $253 million to the billions of dollars lost to the drought. That’s according to a new report by the Legislative Budget Board (LBB) that looks at losses from state agencies and public higher education in Texas. $208 million of those losses were due to firefighting costs, most of it spent by the Texas Forest Service. But […]
Summer is almost here, and that means hurricanes are just around the corner, too. To help prepare for evacuations, a new digital billboard system went into action today in three counties in and around Houston at the start of Texas’ Hurricane Preparedness Week. The billboards will usually carry ads (they were paid for by Clear Channel […]
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