fires. nbc s jay gray is at one of the placest hardest hit by the fires, bastrop, texas. jay, good morning. good morning, chris. yeah, you re absolutely right. it s hard to believe, after all we ve seen here, but overnight things did get much worse on the front lines. as the fire continues to grow. covered more than 40 square miles at this point. and it is moving in the new neighborhoods this morning. bad news. it s really growing too fast for the crews or this community to handle at this point. shadows from the fading sun can t hide the overwhelming evidence that texas is under attack. this entire state, especially central texas, is under a siege right now. reporter: a ribbon of flames runs through the state. dozens of wildfires, wrapping around then melting away everything in their path. the worst of the fire seems to be in bastrop. it s been two full days and still firefighters are no closer to gaining the upper hand on the blaze. the bastrop fire is still not
worst fire season in history gets worse by the hour. this is the worst of the worst. southeast of austin, 30,000 acres consumed, hundreds of homes destroyed, zero containment. this fire started sunday, barely 48 hours ago, and already governor rick perry calls it as mean a fire as he has ever seen and he s seen a whole lot of wildfires this year. the texas forest service counts 294 consecutive days of wildfires somewhere in the state. you see the numbers here behind me. not coincidentally, it s been a year of historic drought. so far this year, more than 3 1/2 million acres have burned, about as much land as the entire state of connecticut. in the past 48 hours, more than 700 homes have been lost. many, many more are now in danger. we don t have room to list all the fires that are burning right now or even all of the biggest ones, actually, so here s just a sampling for you. there s the bastrop fire. in travis county, a fire has burned 6500 acres and 67 homes. you may also re