(Reuters) -Electric utility Xcel Energy said on Thursday its facilities likely started the Smokehouse Creek fire, which has destroyed dozens of homes and charred sprawling cattle ranches in the largest wildfire in recorded Texas history.
“Based on currently available information, Xcel Energy acknowledges that its facilities appear to have been involved in an ignition of the Smokehouse Creek fire,” Xcel Energy wrote in a statement.
The Minneapolis-based utility, which provides power and natural gas to parts of Texas and seven other U.S. states, disputed “claims that it acted negligently in maintaining and operating its infrastructure.”
The Smokehouse Fire, which has burned over 1 million acres since erupting in the Texas Panhandle last month, has been linked to two deaths. At least 64 homes were destroyed in the fire, Xcel said in a statement, in which it encouraged people with property or livestock lost in the blaze to submit claims directly to the utility.
The company said a second Texas fire, the Windy Deuce blaze, did not appear to have been started by its infrastructure.
Last Friday, a Texas homeowner who said their home was burned in the Smokehouse fire sued Xcel, claiming that a power pole owned by the company’s subsidiary was in poor condition before it fell and sparked the fire.
Xcel also faces a lawsuit in Colorado, where the costliest wildfire on record in the state, the Marshall Fire, had killed two people and destroyed nearly 1,100 homes in December 2021.
(Reporting by Laila Kearney in New York and Seher Dareen in Bengaluru; Editing by Shilpi Majumdar, Liz Hampton and Franklin Paul)
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