This Labor Day holiday marks 15 years since the most destructive wildfire in recorded Texas history — measured not by acres burned, but by homes lost.
The Bastrop County Complex Fire was just one of more than 30,000 that ignited in 2011 — by far the worst year since the Texas A&M Forest Service has been keeping track. It was spurred by an unprecedented one-year drought.
It had been hot and dry all that summer. But Sunday, Sept. 4, would be the start of something different for Central Texas. Fires started not just in Bastrop but also in Pflugerville, Spicewood and Delhi.
The fires would displace families, destroy homes and livelihoods, test the mettle of hundreds of first responders, and eventually redraw and rewrite the stories of thousands of lives.
Today on the Texas Standard we’re revisiting the stories of the Labor Day wildfires, collected by our home station KUT in the months after the 2011 fire outbreak in Central Texas.
This is “Forged in flames: An oral history of the Labor Day wildfires.”
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