Wildfires sweeping across drought-stricken Texas have destroyed more than 1,000 homes in the last several days as they move into more populated areas, Reuters cited Governor Rick Perry as saying on Tuesday. Perry surveyed damage in west Austin on Tuesday, where dozens of homes have been destroyed and hundreds evacuated. Speaking after his visit, the Texas governor, who left the presidential campaign trail to deal with the fires, said he hopes cooler temperatures and slowing winds on Tuesday will help firefighters contain more than 50 fires across the state. "The magnitude of these losses are pretty stunning," Perry said at a news conference in west Austin. "We've got a lot of Texans living in shelters now." Earlier in a television interview, Perry called the fires in central Texas "a very fluid and very critical" situation. Schools were closed and churches were filled with evacuees across central Texas on Tuesday, and blazes were still being fought in north Texas near Fort Worth and east to Houston. Nearly 600 homes have been destroyed in communities on the outskirts of Austin and nearby Bastrop County, a rural community about 40 miles (65 km) southeast of the city. More than 3.6 million acres (1.5 million hectares) in Texas have been scorched by wildfires since November, fed by a continuing drought that has caused more than $5 billion in damage to the state's agricultural industry and shows no sign of easing. Officials said the worst of the fires was the Bastrop County Complex fire, east of Austin, which stretched for 16 miles (26 km) and more than 30,000 acres (12,000 hectares). Authorities said two people were killed on Sunday. A small number of firefighters have been treated for heat-related issues, officials said, but no serious injuries have been reported among the hundreds of personnel on scene.
