Last week, a series of wildfires broke out in Beauregard Parish in southwestern Louisiana, near the Texas border. Several communities received evacuation orders and the parish sheriff’s office estimates that 40,000 acres have burned so far. According to the most recent reports from Wednesday August 30, the fire is 50 percent contained – but dry vegetation and high winds are beginning to push the flames east.

Intense downpours brought relief from high temperatures Monday to some parts of Louisiana, but officials say it did little to reduce the threat of wildfires that have now claimed more than 60,000 acres across the state.

One of the largest wildfires in Louisiana history continued to burn Tuesday in Beauregard Parish having already destroyed more than 30,000 acres as emergency response personnel from across the South work to protect the most threatened town of Merryville with a command post in DeRidder.

From the air, state leaders are getting a view of something they call historic.

“Never in the recorded history of the state have we ever seen fires of this magnitude and this scope,” said Louisiana Agriculture and Forestry Commissioner Mike Strain.

The Biden administration opened the first-ever leases for offshore wind in the Gulf of Mexico up for bid on Tuesday off the coasts of southwest Louisiana and southeast Texas.

At least two people have died in “unprecedented” wildfires that have ravaged Louisiana in recent weeks.

An elderly woman was pronounced dead Sunday after a brushfire spread to a shed in St. Tammany Parish, just north of New Orleans, and earlier this month, a man died in Franklinton when his home and surrounding property caught fire.