South Central Texas Wildfires

This article is both a praise and a condemnation of the Austin, Texas area media, especially TV and radio stations regarding how they handled the fires in this area. Much of the local media including, Fox 7, KTBC-TV, ABC 24 KVUE-TV, NBC 36 KXAN-TV, CBS 42 KEYE-TV and 590-AM KLBJ radio handled the fire in Bastrop County, Texas very well. They also mentioned fires in Steiner Ranch, Cedar Creek , Dripping Springs and Leander. They gave occasional updates on all these fires.

But there was one fire they barely mentioned and one had it not been mentioned in church no one would have known about it. The local area media, including ABC-KTSA radio 550-AM in San Antonio did an excellent job in covering the fire in Bastrop and Bastrop County. The fires the media barely mentioned were in Caldwell County.

Leander is in Williamson County, The Dripping Springs fire was described as being near the Hays-Travis County Line, Bastrop is in Bastrop County. Caldwell County is East of Hays County, South of Travis County and West of Bastrop County. Lockhart is in Caldwell County. I live about 7 miles east of Lockhart, Texas on east Highway 20 near Highway 713 (FM 20 & FM 713). 713 starts (or ends) where it meets 20. About 6 or so miles up 713 is a little town called McMahan, McMahan is near FM 86 and 713. It is in Caldwell County. Go up 713 after crossing 86 another 10 miles there is FM 304, which also goes into Bastrop. About 3 or so miles past 86 is a road called Sand Hill Road.

Some of the members of the church I attend live in the area of that fire. Yet the media did not concentrate much at all on that fire. That fire lasted 3 days and yet most the local media only mentioned it shortly after it began. After the 1^st mention we just were not in danger, though we were pretty much in the middle of all the fires and had they spread in this direction, Lockhart, McMahan , Dale and Luling, Texas along with several other small towns (so to speak) just were not worth the mention. Our safety was not important. What was important was Bastrop and Steiner Ranch and probably the only reason Steiner Ranch was important enough to mention regularly is that a whole lot of very wealthy people live there.

Don't get me wrong, the media did a good job of covering most the fires, especially the Bastrop fire and they should have, but there were some major small town fires going on near by that barely received any mention at all and they should of given us updates as well. One of my next door neighbors saw the flames from that fire and thought it was coming in our direction. So, media, next time, please comment on the other major fires too.