By Kenrick Cai
SAN FRANCISCO, March 15 (Reuters) – Multiple wildfires, including the largest in Nebraska’s history, have burned through more than 600,000 acres of the state, local officials said Sunday.
As of Saturday, the biggest wildfire, the Morrill Fire, had burned 460,000 acres and killed one person, Governor Jim Pillen said. It and three other major fires across central and western Nebraska remained entirely uncontained as of Saturday, state officials said.
Bad weather related to a severe winter storm in the Midwest has hampered fire suppression efforts, according to an incident management team run by the federal National Interagency Fire Center, which said on Sunday that it had assumed management of the two largest fires, the Morrill Fire and the Cottonwood Fire.
The Cottonwood blaze has burned more than 100,000 acres as of Saturday, according to a press release from the governor’s office, the Nebraska National Guard and the Nebraska Emergency Management Agency.
The latest update on Sunday from the federal agency did not provide any information on containment or burn size estimates. The governor’s office, the Nebraska Emergency Management Agency and the National Interagency Fire Center incident team did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment.
The governor declared an emergency on Friday, mobilizing National Guard soldiers and aircraft to respond to the fires. High winds, low humidity and dry conditions triggered the wildfires on Thursday and by the next day, they had exceeded the capacity of local fire responders, according to the emergency proclamation.
Federal officials would work with local and state personnel from Nebraska, as well as neighboring Colorado, South Dakota and Wyoming, the center said. Nebraska’s two largest cities, Omaha and Lincoln, sent fire crews to help after an appeal from Pillen.
High winds faster than 50 miles per hour (80.5 km per hour) on Sunday are expected to keep aircraft grounded, the federal fire center said. While the winter storm has brought snow to Nebraska, the heavy gusts may prevent that precipitation from affecting the fires, according to the release.
The governor also issued a statewide burn ban through March 27.
(Reporting by Kenrick Cai; Editing by Thomas Derpinghaus)
