Angela Morland, the owner of Cactus Inn & RV Parking in McLean, Texas, a motel built in the 1950s, said in a phone interview that she had been ordered to evacuate with her guests on Friday afternoon. She was staying in the basement of a Methodist church about 20 miles away. Many people had gotten rooms at her motel to seek refuge from the highway winds.
“Go east,” Ms. Morland, 57, said she told her guests when she learned they had to leave.
Ms. Morland said she could smell the fire when she packed into her vehicle with her dog, a Rhodesian Ridgeback named Stella, and a stranger. She said about 50 other evacuees were staying with her in the church basement.
“I was frightened,” she said.
Alanreed, another small community in Gray County, about 60 miles east of Amarillo, was also advised to evacuate on Friday because of the threat of fire, said Dustin Miller, an emergency management spokesman for the city of Pampa, the county seat. He said that wind gusts in the area had reached 101 miles per hour, diminishing visibility and making travel treacherous.
“It’s dying down slowly, but not enough,” Mr. Miller said.
He said there were no injuries or property damage reported as of Friday afternoon in the county. But at least two semi-trucks had flipped over on Interstate 40.
Officials had been anticipating the fierce storms. On Thursday, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas directed the Division of Emergency Management to deploy all necessary resources to the affected areas ahead of the wildfires.
The Panhandle, a sparsely populated area, is no stranger to fire disasters. A year ago, downed power lines ignited a wildfire known as the Smokehouse Creek fire, which burned more than a million acres, consuming houses, scorching vast ranch lands and killing livestock. It was the largest blaze on record in Texas.
Lucinda Holt contributed reporting from Abernathy, Texas, and Jonathan Wolfe from London.
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