Wildfires rampage across Texas

A firefighter was killed west of Fort Worth as wildfires erupted across a wide swath of Texas, fanned by 60 mile per hour winds and feeding on brittle brush after the driest March in state’s history.Gregory Simmons, 51, a firefighter in the community of Eastland, was killed fighting a fast moving brush fire near the town of Gorman, according to Eastland Mayor Mark Pipkin. A firefighter injured on April 10 fighting a blaze in the Panhandle remained in critical condition in Lubbock.At least nine separate fires were burning over 200,000 acres on Friday, and most of the fires were just zero to 20 percent contained by late in the day, according to April Saginor of the Texas Forest Service.Strong winds have pushed fires sparked by metal work, train cars and lightning strikes across acres of thick grassland and tough terrain. Single-digit humidity and plentiful fuel have made every spark dangerous. Grasses and other plants that thrived in heavy rains last year dried to kindling over the winter. Until Friday, the fires had been in rural areas and mostly away from heavily populated cities.But emergency officials issued a mandatory evacuation for the northern suburbs of San Angelo in West Texas on Friday as wind gusts pushed wildfires sparked by lightning toward the city. Flames were within a mile of a bedroom community of Grape Creek and roughly five miles from the outskirts of San Angelo, a city of more than 90,000, at the time of the evacuation.Winds were gusting out of the north at up to 26 miles per hour, pushing the flames toward San Angelo, National Weather Service meteorologist Joel Dunn said. Flames instead raced east at up to four miles an hour, he said. Empty cropland just outside the town gave firefighters the break they needed to protect it, he said.