huge Texas wildfire

An elite search team was set to arrive Wednesday in Bastrop County, Texas, where firefighters were battling a huge blaze that has killed at least two people.

"I cannot emphasize enough to Texans in the impacted areas the importance of heeding all warnings from local officials, especially evacuation orders, as these fires are mean, swift and highly dangerous," Gov. Rick Perry said.

The 600-member Texas Task Force 1 will assist local officials and first responders, Perry said.

A leadership team from the task force arrived Tuesday. "Based on the needs of local officials, a wide area search team consisting of approximately 100 members and nearly one dozen search canines will be in Bastrop Wednesday morning to work with the local incident management team and assist with search operations," Perry's office said in a statement.

The announcement did not say that anyone was missing, but said Perry made the decision to send in the team after being "briefed on the potential loss of life."

Wildfires, which have been raging across the state for nearly 300 days, have claimed 120,000 acres in the past week alone.


The Bastrop County Complex fire, near Austin, is the largest. It began Sunday and has spread across 33,000 acres, forcing the evacuations of at least 5,000 people, officials said Tuesday.

Winds are expected to be relatively calm Wednesday, as they were Tuesday, but humidity is likely to drop "into the very dry 10% to 20% range this afternoon," said HLN meteorologist Bob Van Dillen. "That's the real danger today."

There is an air quality alert Wednesday for San Antonio, Austin, Victoria, Houston and Galveston, said CNN meteorologist Dave Hennen.

At the local convention center in Bastrop, evacuees were stopping by to pick up supplies and water.

"It's shocking, mostly, not knowing what the end result is going to be," Bill Ludwig said.

Linda Arebalos said that while her house can be replaced, "all the memories is what really hurts, hits the heart." She said she thought about the baby pictures, the things her children made in elementary school, "the things I put up to save to give to their kids. And it's gone. It hurts."

Jerry Hooten found little more than ashes when he returned to his home and the burned-out shells of cars he had to leave behind.

"We ain't happy about it, but we're all alive," said Hooten, who is staying at an RV park outside the danger zone.

"I don't think it's registered in our brains that our house is gone and that, really, half of Bastrop is gone," said evacuee Claire Johnson.

The Bastrop fire was 30% contained Wednesday morning, the Texas Forest Service said.

The two people killed by the blaze were not public safety personnel, according to incident command officials, who declined to offer details.

The deaths raise the overall toll from the outbreak of fires to four lives lost. A wildfire killed a woman and her 18-month-old child Sunday when flames engulfed their home near Gladewater, officials said.

The Texas Forest Service said it has responded to 181 fires over the last week.

The fires have destroyed more than 700 homes since Sunday, according to the forest service. More than 1,000 homes have burned in the state since fire season began in November.

The danger from a fire near Houston -- called the Magnolia fire -- appeared to be lessening for the most populated areas. Officials in Harris County, which includes Houston, said the fire was no longer a threat there. Also, many residents were allowed back into their homes Tuesday in neighboring Montgomery County.

About 4,000 homes in Montgomery had been evacuated, according to Lt. Dan Norris of the county's emergency management office. Firefighters continued to battle hot spots in Montgomery, but the bulk of the problems from the Magnolia fire appeared to be centered in Waller and Grimes counties, Norris said.

Another blaze in Grimes County, the Riley Road fire, has destroyed 20 homes and has hundreds more in its path, the forest service said. It had burned 5,000 acres by late Tuesday, according to the forest service.

So far in 2011, 7.2 million acres of grass, scrub and forest have burned in wildfires nationwide. Of those, some 3.5 million acres -- nearly half -- have been in Texas, according to Inciweb, a fire-tracking website maintained by state and federal agencies.

Wednesday marked the 296th consecutive day of wildfires in Texas, according to Inciweb.

More than 2,000 firefighters are working fires across the state, said Tom Boggus, director of the Texas Forest Service.

Two major fires in Travis County destroyed 44 structures and damaged 74 others, Roger Wade, a spokesman for the Travis County Sheriff's Office, said Tuesday.

Authorities allowed residents of the Steiner Ranch area, burned by one of those Travis fires, to return to their homes Tuesday afternoon. Nichelle Bielinski was among those.

Standing amid the ruin of her two-story house, where smoke was still rising, she took stock.

"I'm OK," she said. "I am the luckiest person in the world. My family is safe."

The drought in Texas has cost the state an estimated $5 billion this year in loss of crops and livestock, said CNN meteorologist Chad Myers. "Now fires are adding to that number."