As battle continues, Texas wildfire victim identified

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Texas fire officials have identified the second victim of the weeklong Bastrop fire, a blaze that has forced thousands of people to evacuate and destroyed hundreds of homes.

Two people have died in the blaze, including Michael Troy Farr, a 48-year-old city employee in Austin who was found Tuesday at his home on Hudson Drive near Smithville.

On Saturday, officials released the name of the second victim — 58-year-old Vickie Faye Keenan.

Bastrop County Sheriff Terry Pickering told the Austin American-Statesman that Keenan was found Tuesday in the doorway of a metal shed in Paige, near where the fire started.

Keenan, a retired administrative assistant, was staying with a friend at the home in the Circle D subdivision, Pickering said. He said he didn’t know where Keenan was from, why she had been staying with the friend or for how long. Keenan probably died of smoke inhalation, the sheriff said.

The wildfires that have raged across Texas during the last week have killed four people, including a 20- year-old woman and her 18-month-old trapped in a mobile home engulfed in flames in eastern Gregg County.

As of Saturday, the Bastrop fire had burned about 34,000 acres and was 50% contained.

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Molly Hennessy-Fiske