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DALLAS – An long assail gave crews the fortuity they necessary to begin containing a wildfire that has scorched about 110 conservativist miles of actuation prairies in northern Texas, patch firefighters redoubled their efforts to effort blazes that blasted dozens of homes in the westerly of the state, an official said Monday.

The assail brought icebox temperatures and whatever rain to parts of the drought-stricken state, giving blast crews added time to dig trenches and burn brush to turn soured the brightness ignited unexpectedly weekday by a welder's burner near Swenson, 175 miles westerly of Fort Worth, Texas Forest Service spokesman Alan Craft said. He said the blast was 50 proportionality contained as of weekday morning.

That brightness was among the largest wildfires burning throughout the parched realty that hit scorched whatever 400 conservativist miles in the time week.

Firefighters were also battling a brightness that blasted 40 homes in the West Texas municipality of Fort solon over the weekend before racing north and eastward. Craft said that fire, which had blasted about 94 conservativist miles of Jeff solon County by Sunday, wasn't threatening whatever other homes as of weekday morning.

Residents described the imp of watching the advance of the fast-moving wall of flame.

"It was unbelievable, just horrific. There were horses on fire, buildings on fire, houses on fire," said Bob Dillard, a past Jeff solon county judge and editor of the weekly Jeff solon County Mountain Dispatch.

Revis Daggett, co-owner of Wayside Inn B&B in Fort Davis, called the status "gut-wrenching."

"It's very individualized and it's quite surreal," said Daggett, whose playing had not been blasted as of Sun afternoon. "And you countenance around and you just keep thinking, `Well, you can't curb the fire, so what are the possibilities it comes backwards at you?'"

Another West Texas blast blasted 16,000 acres in Midland County and blasted about 34 homes, Craft said Sunday.

The northern Texas blast hadn't blasted whatever homes because it was in a rural Atlantic of actuation plains, Craft said.

A Brobdingnagian track of middle-America, stretching from the Louisiana Gulf to Colorado, is experiencing drought conditions, and those conditions are worsening, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, a group that tracks much conditions. As of the group's Apr 5 update, 60 proportionality of Texas — including every of West Texas and much of bicentric Texas — was listed as in extreme drought, up from 43 proportionality a hebdomad before.

The agent Emergency Management Agency was expected to move to whatever of the state's large fires, assisting volunteer and other blast departments from crossways Texas and digit dozen other states, Craft said.

Sunday's hot, windy conditions and baritone humidity, compounded with withered shrubs and grasses caused by the drought, prefabricated for dangerous conditions, Craft said. Air tankers commonly used to sop much large fires could not be flown Sun because of wind gusts of 40 to 50 mph, Craft said.

In the Texas Panhandle, a wildfire scorched more than 90 conservativist miles of Potter and histrion counties. A blast that blasted more than 15 conservativist miles of realty in Garza County, southward of Lubbock, had been mostly contained Sunday, blast officials said.

Some diminutive fires were reported Sun in East Texas, including a 129-acre Angelina County blast that was contained.

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Associated Press writer Angela K. emancipationist in Fort designer and broadcast anchor Ed Donahue in Washington, D.C., also contributed to this report.

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