The student news site of Mountlake Terrace High School in Mountlake Terrace, Washington.

The Hawkeye

The student news site of Mountlake Terrace High School in Mountlake Terrace, Washington.

The Hawkeye

The student news site of Mountlake Terrace High School in Mountlake Terrace, Washington.

The Hawkeye

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Texas continues to be ravaged by the worst fire season in state history

Even though it was a pretty mild summer for the Pacific Northwest, many residents complained about how summer came late and didn’t start getting nice until near the end. But in reality, the people of Texas had it much worse.

Texas had record droughts this past summer. According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, as of Sept. 13, there was not a single county in Texas that had not experienced drought. Also, approximately 88 percent of the state was in drought level D4, the highest level on the scale.

With extreme droughts in Texas, things dried up fast and made perfect fuel for any fire.

Fires have devastated the state of Texas this fire season. According to the Texas Forest Service, since fire season began on Nov. 15, 2010, Texas Forest Service and area fire departments have responded to 22,602 fires. These wildfires have burned 3.7 million acres, an area larger than the state of Connecticut and have destroyed over 2,700 homes.

People were forced to abandon their homes, businesses, everything they knew.  A Texas woman who was forced to evacuate told ABC News, “While we were grabbing our things you could feel the heat of the fire and there was smoke in our house already.”

Not only did these fires have a terrible impact on so many lives, it had an extremely large financial impact.

Mark Hana, a spokesman for the Insurance Council of Texas, told CNN that the wildfires could have a cost of over $250 million to homeowners. Between the economic impacts from the gigantic wildfires and horrendous droughts, it is going to end up being one extremely expensive summer for the state of Texas.

Texas governor and Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry took a break from his campaign to return to his state and observe the extensive damage.

“I have seen a number of big fires in my life…this one is as mean looking as I’ve ever seen,” Perry told ABC News.

Story continues below advertisement

Perhaps the rain isn’t so bad after all.

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About the Contributor
Nick Fiorillo, Editor-in-Chief

Nick Fiorillo is the Editor-in-Chief of the Hawkeye and thehawkeye.org. This is Nick's second year of serving as editor. Last year, he led the Hawkeye in one of the organization's most dramatic transformations in decades, replacing the broadsheet newspaper with a feature based newsmagazine and an emphasis on online content.

Prior to serving as editor-in-chief, Nick was the local news editor during his sophomore year and was a staff reporter during his freshman year.

Nick was named as the 2014 Free Spirit Scholar from Washington state, and traveled to Washington, D.C. as the Washington state delegate to the 2014 Al Neuharth Free Spirit and Journalism Conference. He has received several state and national awards for journalism, including several JEA National Write-off Competition Awards. He was recently awarded the rating of "Superior" for Editorial Writing at the Spring 2014 JEA/NSPA High School Journalism Conference in San Diego, Calif.

His interests include journalism, politics, public policy, law and education. He plans on attending a four-year university and majoring in political science and social policy.

You can view his pressfolio here.

Twitter: @nick_fiorillo

LinkedIn: Nick Fiorillo

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