A series of wildfires swept through the rural Texas Panhandle region early Wednesday, prompting evacuations, knocking out power for thousands and shutting down a nuclear weapons facility, while strong winds, dry grass and temperatures worsened the situation. Unusually warm, firey.
Local emergency officials said an unknown number of homes and other buildings in Hutchinson County were damaged or completely destroyed.
The main facility, which assembles and dismantles the US nuclear arsenal, suspended its operations on Tuesday night.
The National Nuclear Security Administration in Pantex said during a press conference: “We evacuated our non-essential employees from the site, out of extreme caution. But we have a well-equipped fire department that has been trained in these scenarios, and is on site, monitoring and ready in the event that any type of situation arises.” The real emergency is at the facility site.”
Early Wednesday, it was reported that the facility had returned to “normal daytime operations” and that all employees were required to report for duty according to their assigned schedule.
The Pantex facility is located approximately 17 miles northeast of Amarillo and approximately 515 kilometers northwest of Dallas.
Since 1975, the facility has become the main site for assembling and disassembling American atomic bombs, as the facility assembled the last new bomb in 1991 while dismantling thousands of them.
Meanwhile, the weather forecast gave some hope to the fire brigades, as temperatures are expected to become colder, winds will decrease, and perhaps rain will fall on Thursday, but the situation at the present time is still bad in some areas.
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