Officials Say Fort Hood Battling Their Largest Fire Ever on Base

The dry, windy weather conditions in Texas are wreaking havoc across the state, with wildfires burning in multiple areas. Fort Hood, Texas is dealing with it largest fire ever on base.

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We've been seeing the smoke from the fire on Fort Hood for about a week now. The fire is being called the Crittenburg Complex fire and is currently the second largest fire burning in the state.

Fires in Texas

NBC DFW reports that there are 12 active fires burning across the state of Texas and officials fear that dry, hot, windy weather will lead to more. The Eastland Complex fire started over a week ago, has burned more that 54,000 acres, and is reported to be 90% contained.

Crittenburg Complex Fire

The Crittenburg Complex fire is the fire burning closest to home here in Central Texas. Officials updated us on Monday afternoon, March 28 and according to The Killeen Daily Herald, Fort Hood officials are saying the fire has burned over 32,000 acres and is 45% contained. A second fire is burning outside of Fort Hood, the Flat Fire and has burned about 300 acres and is reported to be 10% contained.

Garrison Commander Chad Foster said in Monday's new conference that the weekends windy weather created more problems for crews battling the fire.

"Late last week, we thought we had things pretty well in hand, but on Sunday we had a pretty significant shift in wind conditions and hotter temperatures on Sunday, too. In the span of about two hours roughly, winds picked up significantly and the direction of wind changed, which caused the situation to deteriorate quite a bit which led us to kind of where we are now."

Evacuation orders were given to about 200 residents of Flat on Sunday afternoon, but those orders were lifted by Sunday evening.

Texas Weather Forecast

According to our news partners at KWTX, rain is in the forecast for Tuesday overnight into Wednesday. Whether it make it to the fire areas and be enough to help is still in question.

Hopefully mother nature is on our side here.