2024-02-28T13:59:52+00:00
A-
A
A+
/ The fires sweeping through the rural area of the US state of Texas threatened a nuclear weapons facility on Wednesday, causing it to be closed, leading to the evacuation of residents, and causing varying degrees of damage to homes and buildings.
A series of wildfires swept through the Texas Panhandle early today, prompting evacuations and power outages for thousands of residents, while strong winds, dry grass and unusually high temperatures exacerbated the fires.
An unknown number of homes and other buildings in Hutchinson County were damaged or completely destroyed, local emergency officials said.
The main facility, which assembles and dismantles the US nuclear arsenal, suspended operations Tuesday night.
“We have evacuated our non-essential personnel from the site, out of an abundance of caution,” the National Nuclear Security Administration at Pantex said during a news conference. “But we have a well-equipped fire department that is trained for these scenarios and is on site, monitoring and ready in case any type of real emergency arises at the facility site.”
Early Wednesday, the facility was reported to be back to “normal daytime operations,” and all employees were required to report for duty according to their assigned schedule.
The Pantex facility is located approximately 17 miles northeast of Amarillo and approximately 320 miles northwest of Dallas.
Since 1975, the facility has been the primary site for the assembly and dismantling of U.S. atomic bombs, with the facility assembling its last new bomb in 1991 while dismantling thousands of others.
Meanwhile, the weather forecast gave some hope to firefighters, with cooler temperatures, less wind and possible rain expected on Thursday, but the situation is still bad in some areas.