A series of raging wildfires sweeping across the Texas Panhandle have burned through 1.26 million acres across the state and led to the death of two people.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00 I have witnessed and observed some extraordinary damage in our state.
00:07 It could be caused by hurricanes or tornadoes and frequently when you see the aftermath
00:13 of that damage, there's some semblance of a structure that is still there.
00:22 When you look at the damages that have occurred here, it's just gone, completely gone.
00:31 Nothing left but ashes on the ground.
00:35 Some early and I will categorize as premature assessments show that there are about 400
00:43 to 500 structures that have been destroyed.
00:47 There's no way to say for certainty that's going to be the final number because there's
00:52 still the ongoing assessment process.
00:55 Recovery is a huge issue right now.
01:01 We have people who don't have a home, don't have a place to go to.
01:07 Their home is gone.
01:09 And we as a state, we as a community, and we as Texans need to collaborate together
01:17 to work not just on that restoration process, but that restoration process takes a while.
01:22 We need to work on the process of finding immediate and temporary housing for these
01:28 individual people.
01:30 One thing that I will be seeking to do is to make a federal disaster declaration request.
01:36 In order to be able to do that, there's a dollar amount of damages that must be shown
01:42 that has been suffered to qualify for that request.
01:47 And all of these local officials and others will be working to help aggregate the damages
01:54 that have occurred that would help qualify for federal assistance in that regard.