Long road to recovery continues after Panhandle wildfires

A panel of Texas lawmakers heard testimony Tuesday about the investigation into what caused the largest wildfire in Texas history, which burned more than one million acres of the panhandle in late February and early March.

Texans affected by the historic blaze also shared their stories. Jason Abraham is a rancher and helicopter pilot who assisted state and local volunteer fire crews when the Smokehouse Creek Wildfire and Reamer fire threatened multiple communities.

“We're building fences at $25,000 mile. And just for a reference: my ranch, I've got over 100 miles of fence on my ranch. So the money is gushing out,” Abraham told members of the Texas House’s State Affairs Committee.

“We've got no cows. The cattle market’s good, but all the cows burned up,” said Abraham. The Texas AgriLife Extension Service estimated more than $100 million in losses associated with ranches due to February’s fires.

Abraham also served on the chamber's special committee created to investigate the Panhandle wildfires. The committee released its findings in May of this year, but said that their work will continue alongside the region’s recovery.

While wildfires have long been a part of life for ranchers in the Panhandle, their frequency is increasing. Ranch owner Craig Cowden told lawmakers his family’s Panhandle ranch has seen three wildfires that “burned the complete ranch up” since 2006.

According to the special committee’s report, several factors over the last 20 years are responsible. Those include a “steady decrease” in cultivated farm acreage, leading to an increase in the area’s fuel loads of dry grass over rough terrain. Less farmed land also means the loss of fire breaks that come with cultivated fields.

The committee’s May report also spotlighted neglect by “irresponsible” oil and gas operators involving electrical safety problems on and around well site locations, where exposed wiring and other dilapidated electrical equipment can serve as ignition sources.

“On recommendation from the Railroad Commission, I've started to submit formal complaints to the Railroad Commission,” Cowden said on Tuesday. “I've submitted 15 formal complaints that consisted of 44 wells, and I have approximately 475 wells on my property. Out of that, I've heard back on 20 of the wells, and it's resulted in 23 violations.”

Lawmakers also heard about how the wildfire had affected Panhandle residents’ livelihoods.

“My biggest concern in this whole thing, and going forward, was the economies,” said James Henderson in his testimony. Henderson is a landowner and cattle raiser in Childress and Donnelly counties, who also serves as a member of the Board of Directors for the Texas & Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association.

“We're a very rural area, but our economies are dependent on the lifeblood, which is cattle and grass, and that economy is gone now for probably six or seven years,” he said.

Tuesday’s hearing also included testimony from leaders with electric utility and inspection companies after lawsuits cited Xcel Energy as owners of the power lines that fell and ignited the Smokehouse Creek Wildfire.

Mike Adams is the CEO of Osmose Utility Services, which handles infrastructure inspection for Xcel Energy in the area where the fire started. Adams said the company inspects around 6 million wood poles and visits about 9 million grid infrastructure assets annually.

“You start to inspect, you start to chip off decayed wood, and you reapply a preservative,” Adams said. “And if you do the right things with a wood pole, we believe we can make a wood pole last 75, to maybe even 100 years at the ground line.”

Exchanges with the committee about what wooden power poles could take opened up a conversation about expanding broadband in rural areas of Texas — another weight on the state’s electrical infrastructure — as some work to bring internet coverage for around 2.8 million Texas homes.

Adams told the committee that simulations in resilience studies tested poles for winds as high as 120 miles per hour.

Xcel Energy's New Mexico and Texas Southwestern Public Service Company, also known as SPS, has acknowledged the utility’s role in sparking the Smokehouse Creek Wildfire.

State Representative Richard Peña Raymond (D-Laredo) had questions for SPS president Adrian Rodriguez about what the investigative report described as “a regulatory no man’s land” that may have allowed a previously inspected power pole to continue deteriorating for a month, before high winds eventually toppled it and ignited the dry Panhandle grass.

Raymond inquired about whether current laws defined the company’s standard procedure for replacing aging infrastructure like power poles, to which Rodriguez said the laws and regulation were not that specific.

Rodriguez told lawmakers SPS conducts visual inspections on a three-to-five year basis, separate from inspectors with Osmose. Rodriguez said the company’s previous protocol had the pole to be replaced within 12 months, but that policy has changed since the fire, to require replacement within days.

For many, the reliability of the state’s power grid came to Texans’ attention during Winter Storm Uri in 2021, and again over the summer as Hurricane Beryl knocked out connectivity for more than 2.6 million citizens, each leading to separate investigations.

But Xcel Energy, unlike Centerpoint or Texas RE, is not connected to ERCOT, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas. Xcel and SPS remain a part of the Southwest Power Pool, which services electricity in the Panhandle.

When it comes to maintaining safety, reliability, and affordability with the state’s electrical infrastructure, Texas lawmakers called it a delicate balance that must be struck in regulation — something Representative Ken King (R-Canadian) referred to earlier this year as “a pandora’s box” that could come with tighter regulation of utility services.

SPS’s Adrian Rodriguez confirmed to the committee that tightening regulations during the upcoming legislative session could contribute to increased costs for ratepayers, especially when factoring in the frequency and intensity of other extreme weather events in Texas.

Rodriguez told the committee SPS will be submitting the company’s plan to address future fire risks to the Public Utility Commission of Texas later this year.