An unchecked wildfire southeast of Austin, Texas, destroyed 300 homes, scorched thousands of acres and stretched across a 16-mile area Monday morning, authorities said.
Another blaze in eastern Texas killed a mother and her 18-month-old child when flames engulfed their mobile home Sunday near Gladewater, the Gregg County Sheriff's Department said.
The fires were among more than 35 across the state, the Texas Forest Service said Monday. Officials said low relative humidity and strong winds from Lee, which made landfall as a tropical storm but has weakened to a tropical depression, fanned the flames.
The outbreak of wildfires prompted Gov. Rick Perry to pull out of Monday's South Carolina forum for Republican presidential candidates and head back to Texas, his office said.
The massive, uncontained fire in Bastrop County, near Austin, was the state's largest on Monday morning. It had destroyed 300 homes and threatened about 1,000 others, officials with the forest service's incident management team reported. About 5,000 residents evacuated as flames approached, officials said.
Satellite images Monday showed the fire stretching over about 25,000 acres, jumping the Colorado River and a highway, the forest service said.
"It was like a storm coming through. You could smell the earth burning," said Julian Ochoa, who was evacuated from a Bastrop subdivision Sunday afternoon.
The 23-year-old grabbed his dog, a toothbrush, his birth certificate and a few pictures as he left. He didn't know Sunday whether his home had survived the blaze.
"All of Bastrop is a giant smoke cloud," he said.
Firefighters planned to use Black Hawk helicopters to douse flames with a mixture of water and fire retardant Monday morning, the incident management team said. Tanker trucks will also be used to battle the blaze.
The fire forced parts of state highways 71 and 21 to shut and additional road closures were expected, fire officials said Sunday.
At least 56 new fires across Texas on Sunday burned about 30,000 acres, the state's fire service said. Fires were reported in at least 17 counties.
Texas is battling its worst fire season in state history. A record 3.5 million acres have burned since the start of the season in November.
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