Ross Fire Stalls at 26% Containment for Third Straight Day, Now Second-Largest Wildfire in North Texas History

Since the fire ignited near the community of Ross in Palo Pinto County just before 1:30 p.m. on Monday, August 24, it has grown from an initial 25 acres to roughly 85,000 acres across Palo Pinto and Jack counties. Containment has held at 26% since Friday, August 28, according to the Texas A&M Forest Service, meaning firefighters have made no additional ground on the fire's perimeter in three days.

That plateau makes the Ross Fire the second-largest wildfire in recorded North Texas history, according to the National Weather Service's Fort Worth office. It trails only the 2011 Possum Kingdom Complex Fire, which burned 148,000 acres across Stephens, Young and Palo Pinto counties, as reported by KERA News citing WFAA-TV.

What's confirmed damaged

Palo Pinto County Judge Shane Long told reporters five structures have been destroyed. Among them is the historic Worth Ranch Scout Camp, where the Longhorn Council of Scouting America says multiple buildings suffered catastrophic damage, though no campers, guests or staff were on site when flames swept through and camp ranger Pat Adams was safely evacuated.

At Lake Godstone, a 188-acre nature retreat near Palo Pinto, volunteer firefighters using lake water and buckets managed to save most structures even as nearly all the property's vegetation burned. Ranch manager Dominic Derosa told Fox 4 News the fire caused an estimated millions of dollars in damage to the land alone.

Power infrastructure has taken a significant hit. United Cooperative Services reported 325 power poles damaged or knocked down, with roughly half replaced as of Friday, August 28. Oncor area manager Pat Wilson told KERA News that 69 properties experienced outages, with 54 still without power as of Thursday's update. Long said livestock and wildlife deaths have occurred but could not provide an estimate. No human injuries tied directly to the Ross Fire have been reported.

Why it grew so fast

The fire expanded from 25 acres to more than 50,000 acres in roughly 31 hours, according to Tech Times' reporting. Christopher Roos, an environmental archaeologist at Southern Methodist University who studies wildfire dynamics, attributes the speed to what he calls weather whiplash: a wet spring that grew dense brush across Palo Pinto County, followed by a rapid-onset flash drought that converted that vegetation into critical fuel within weeks.

Laura Steven, a public information officer with the Texas A&M Forest Service, described the same conditions as hot and dry conditions across the state combined with a flash drought the agency had been tracking. NOAA's National Integrated Drought Information System confirms flash droughts can deplete soil moisture in weeks rather than the months a conventional drought takes.

Some land-management critics argue that decades of fire suppression and reduced controlled burning on Texas ranchland, not just this year's weather pattern, left more standing fuel available to burn when conditions turned dry. None of the officials or researchers quoted in current reporting dispute that grasslands carried heavy fuel loads. However, Texas A&M Forest Service and SMU's Roos specifically tie the explosive growth to the flash-drought whiplash rather than a broader forest-management failure. No source in this reporting cycle attributes the fire's rapid spread to a specific management decision or agency.

Secondary fires and the bigger picture

The same conditions produced a second blaze Thursday evening, August 27, east of Dallas. The Corky Fire near Wills Point in Van Zandt County burned more than 400 acres and sent two firefighters to the hospital with heat exhaustion, according to Tech Times.

Nationally, the National Interagency Fire Center recorded more than 50,000 wildfires so far in 2026, the most over a comparable period in the past decade, as reported through the Associated Press via Epoch Times. A dozen new large blazes were reported in a single day, August 23, before the Ross Fire even ignited.

Gov. Greg Abbott announced Tuesday, August 25, that FEMA will provide resources to help fight the Ross Fire and urged Texans to limit spark-generating activity during the dangerous conditions. Molson Coors temporarily paused some canning lines at its Fort Worth facility that week due to smoky skies, though the company said there would be no impact on beer supply.

A Fox News video segment labeled the blaze "second largest ever" without the North Texas qualifier that KERA News, Fox 4 News and the Texas A&M Forest Service all attach to that ranking. The fire is not among the largest in Texas history overall, only within the North Texas region.

U.S. Highway 180 and Texas 337 have reopened, and the mandatory evacuation order for Jack County residents along County Road 2210 lifted Wednesday, August 26. The cause of the Ross Fire remains undetermined, and Texas A&M Forest Service has given no firm timeline for full containment, citing continued dependence on wind and humidity.