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A DC-10 jumbo jet originally meant to dump retardant on Central Texas wildfires has been sent to battle fires north of Houston.
The Texas Fire Service says the jetliner has been dispatched to fight blazes in Grimes, Montgomery and Waller counties. Those wildfires have blackened more than 15,000 acres, with crews able to contain 60 percent Friday.
A fire official said there was no immediate need early Friday for crews to launch an aerial assault on Bastrop County, after crews had made progress on the ground.
Deadly raging wildfires have destroyed nearly 1,400 homes in central Texas. The fire is being blamed for destroying tens of thousands of acres of drought-parched land and at least four deaths, two in the Bastrop area and two elsewhere in the state.
Officials had readied a converted DC-10 jetliner capable of dropping 12,000 gallons of fire retardant on the blaze and smoldering hotspots across some 45 square miles near Austin. But Texas Forest Service incident manger Bob Koenig said doing so was not immediately necessary.
The plane is ready to fly but, "if there's no operational need it will stay where it's at," he said.
The DC-10, one of the nation's largest firefighting jets, is just one more strategy the community unfamiliar with massive wildfires is employing to finally get control of the blaze.
Federal Forest service officials contacted 10 Tanker Air Carrier LLC, of Victorville, Calif., which leases the DC-10 to the U.S. Forest Service and states as needed. The state asked that the company "ferry it as quickly as possible" to Texas, which also used the tanker in the spring, said CEO Rick Hatton.
The massive plane had arrived Tuesday night in Austin, about 25 miles west of the blaze, but could not be used until Friday as crews worked to set a temporary plumbing system to funnel retardant into the plane, said Texas Forest Service spokeswoman Holly Huffman.
Huffman said Texas has retardant plants in place at airports other than Autin, but runways at those sites are neither approved to handle3 such a large aircraft nor are as close to the Bastrop blaze. She said the DC-10 -- which costs the state $12,000 per flight hour as well as $45,000 per day availability fee -- will be used in addition to smaller aircraft that ahve been flying since the fire broke out Sunday.
"These tankers aren't magic tools, rather they help to slow down and cool down the fire," she said. "Ground resources will have to go in and contain and extinguish the fire."
Tom Harbour, national fire director for the U.S. Forest Service said retardant can help make the flames shorter and smaller, allowing firefighters on the ground to make headway.
"What puts fires out, what's most effective are the men and women on the ground," he added.
Texas Department of Public Safety Trooper Robbie Barrera said 1,386 residential structures have been destroyed as of Thursday. Barrera said the fires are about 30 percent contained.
The White House said President Obama telephoned Gov. Rick Perry on Wednesday to say the federal government would continue providing firefighting assistance and quickly assess requests for more aid.
The Texas Forest Service reported Wednesday that nearly 800 homes were burned in Bastrop. He said about 5,000 residents remain evacuated. Some of the evacuated residents said they wished the state could have gotten more resources earlier in the week.
Other evacuees have expressed frustration about being kept away from their homes as authorities begin to allow some residents to return Thursday. Officials allowed residents to return to neighborhoods on the fire's outskirts taht are no longer considered threatened. But authorities declined to say how many residents were allowed to go back.
"When they say things burn to the ground, they really mean burn to the ground," said Mary Pierce, who for 22 years lived ona quiet street where pines push up into backyards. She was one of only two residents to lose a home on the block.
Many Bastrop residents said they had received cellphone photos or videos from those who sneaked back into the fire zone or from volunteer firefighters and police who checked on friends' homes. Others were left to crowd around lists of the lost street addresses posted at the county convention center.
The fire's destruction has made the blaze the most catastrophic of more than 170 fires that have erupted in the past week -- one of the most devastating wildfire outbreaks in state history.
The outbreak has made this the state's costliest wildfire season on record, with $216 million in firefighting expenses since late 2010. The crisis is unfolding months after Perry signed a budget that cut funding to the Texas Forest Service by one-third. Yet the agency insisted that being $35 million lighter hasn't left Texas less equipped to fight the latest fires.
Under the new budget, which went into effect last week, no firefighters in the Forest Service were laid off, said Robbie Dewitt, the agency's finance officer. Moreover, the forest service said it will spend whatever is necessary from state coffers to deal with the disaster and have the expenses accounted for later by state leaders.
Texas Task Force 1, an elite search team, mobilized Wednesday in Bastrop to search the smoldering ruins for more victims. But several thousand people successfully evacuated ahead of the fire, and Bastrop County Emergency Management Coordinator Mike Fisher said about 2,500 people had stopped by one of the county's shelters. Many more people likely stayed with family or friends.
Some residents needed no urging to leave because they saw the flames lapping at the trees. Others heard from friends and neighbors, while still others found a sheriff's deputy at their door or heard firemen rolling down the street with bullhorns. In most cases no one had to be told twice. A wildfire here two years ago drove people from their homes and everyone knew about the severity of the drought.
That was the case for Jose "Pepe" Gomez, 57, who had just returned from church to his girlfriend's house Sunday afternoon.
"We were going to celebrate my girlfriend's grandson's birthday, who is only two ...We were going to have a pool party at her swimming pool, have cake for the kids, then they said `get out,"' Gomez said. "We got evacuated from three locations on that same day. In less than 12 hours we were evacuated three times."
"When you looked up you could see this huge cloud ... we knew it was serious," he said.
Gomez said his girlfriend lost everything after having only enough time to grab a little clothing for her kids and a Bible.
"She was in hysteria when she was told her house was leveled," Gomez said. It was the second home she lost to fire.
Brenda Sanders, a 63-year-old hospice nurse whose home had so far survived the blaze, said she had been oblivious to the fire until a sheriff's deputy came to her door. She and her husband had about 20 minutes to gather items. They grabbed the flags that were on their fathers' caskets, some important insurance documents, mementos from her husband's high school and college football career and their cats.
"It's just been a nightmare," she said. "It's been surreal, the whole experience."
Her friend Denise Rodgers, 56, a hospice chaplain, was not so fortunate. Her house in Tahitian Village burned. First, a friend sent her a photo showing her house untouched. "I was thinking I was in the clear." But later she received a shaky video of the flames circling her home and climbing up one side.
"I could see it coming, you know, over the trees," Rodgers said of her last minutes in the house. "I could see the pink glow so I knew it was close."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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