Wildfires sweep across Texas Panhandle, cutting power and forcing temporary shutdown of Pantex nuclear weapons facility

An unknown number of homes and other structures in Hutchinson County were damaged or destroyed, local emergency officials said. The main facility that assembles and disassembles America’s nuclear arsenal shut down its operations Tuesday night but said it would reopen for normal operations on Wednesday

“We have evacuated our personnel, non-essential personnel from the site, just in an abundance of caution,” Laef Pendergraft, a spokesperson for National Nuclear Security Administration’s Production Office at Pantex, said during a news conference. “But we do have a well-equipped fire department that has trained for these scenarios, that is on-site and watching and ready should any kind of real emergency arise on the plant site.”

Early Wednesday Pantex posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, that the plant “is open for normal day shift operations” and that all personnel were to report for duty according to their assigned schedule.

Pantex is about 17 miles (27.36 kilometers) northeast of Amarillo and some 320 miles (515 kilometers) northwest of Dallas. Since 1975 it has been the U.S. main assembly and disassembly site for its atomic bombs. It assembled the last new bomb in 1991 while disassembling thousands.

Republican Gov. Greg Abbott issued a disaster declaration for 60 counties as the largest blaze, the Smokehouse Creek Fire, burned nearly 400 square miles (1,040 square kilometers), according to the Texas A&M Forest Service. That is more than twice its size since the fire sparked Monday.

Authorities have not said what might have caused the blaze, which tore through sparsely populated counties surrounded by rolling plains.

“Texans are urged to limit activities that could create sparks and take precautions to keep their loved ones safe,” Abbott said.

The weather forecast provided some hope for firefighters — cooler temperatures, less wind and possibly rain on Thursday. But for now, the situation was dire in some areas.

In Borger, a community of about 13,000 roughly 25 miles (40.23 kilometers) north of Pantex, Hutchinson County emergency management services personnel planned a convoy to take evacuees from one shelter to another ahead…