All 3200 residents evacuated from Nocona, TX (between Wichita Falls and Gainesville.) Just showed a live shot, very, very long fire line on the northwest side of town, authorities say it is out of control.
BTW, a light smoke fog covers most of the DFW area.
By golly, if Miss Enid Justin were still alive, she'd have been out there herding all those Noconans to a safe place and they'd have all had their best boots on.
Like all Oklahoma news, the fires just entered the Houston TV news consciousness (something about that Red River blocks all communication to the south of it) and of course, it's "the whole city of OKC is on fire !!! and being evacuated!!! here's a resident now: "I didn't see no fire when I come outta muh house, but muh neighbor said "look" and there was flames just rat cheer!!"
Oops! We now interrupt the OKC report yet again for Breaking News Breaking News: Another apartment complex in Houston is on fire --- going now to the scene. "I wuz jest cookin' sumpin' here where I be stayun and alla suddenlike the flames wuz on da roof" -- Narrator in voice-over: Miss Washington moved here from New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina ... "I'z her feeyonce and my three cuzzins jest died last week in that other apartment fire over on Bellfort." Narrator voice-over: Mr Cleveland recently re-located to Houston from Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina ...
This is why *Houston* was named "Texan of the Year" and why they don't bother to report our own 110 brush fires on TV.
"At least a dozen wildfires were burning across Oklahoma. In Texas, more than 20 fires sprang up, including a 22,400-acre blaze threatening 200 homes near Carbon, about 125 miles west of Dallas. [Update: three homes had been destroyed by evening]
Crews flying over the Texas communities of Ringgold, a town of about 100 people near Wichita Falls, and tiny Kokomo, near Eastland, reported both had essentially been wiped out by flames, officials said. ....
Carbon is just northeast of Cross Plains, where more than 90 homes and a church were destroyed in a raging grass fire last week.
"We just took up money for the folks in Cross Plains at church this morning, never thinking it would be us in just three hours," said Mallory Fagan ...
[snip]
Another news story said Ringgold only had 100 population. I can't believe that--thought it was a more thriving community. It used to be one of our stops on our frequent trips to "grandma's" in OK from SE TX.
A favorite part (because it was a break in the scenery) was the stretch from Bowie to Ringgold, where there were large fruit stands all along both sides of the road, which had grown to nice enclosed markets by the last time I drove through there.