BORGER, Texas (KAMR/KCIT) – Amid ongoing efforts to reckon with massive wildfires that have burned across the Texas Panhandle since Monday afternoon, the office of Texas Governor Greg Abbott announced he will receive a briefing and hold a press conference on the state’s response on Friday.
Abbott’s office noted that he will be joined by Texas Division of Emergency Management Chief Nim Kidd, as well as other state and local officials, in Borger on Friday afternoon to receive an update on the wildfire response. After the briefing, Abbott, Kidd, and other officials will hold a press conference to receive questions.
The briefing and conference are expected to begin in Borger at around 12:30 p.m. on Friday and will be live-streamed within this article.
The conference announced by Abbott’s office comes as community members and responding crews from the High Plains region and elsewhere in the state have continued to work to quell at least four major ongoing wildfires, of which one has grown into the largest wildfire in Texas history.
As of Friday morning, two women were confirmed to have died due to the wildfires and two firefighters had been reported injured. Communities in the region have so far also seen dozens of homes and buildings destroyed amid the fires, and Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller estimated cattle deaths to be in the thousands, with more likely to come.
On Wednesday, Abbott directed the TDEM to deploy additional state emergency response resources to the firefighting efforts in the region, after issuing a disaster declaration on Monday for 60 Texas counties in response to the fires. The Federal Emergency Management Agency also approved a grant request to aid the response to the “Smokehouse Creek” fire and “Windy Deuce” fire, meaning Texas will be eligible for 75% reimbursement from the federal government for costs associated with fighting those fires.