By Karen Brooks
AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - Residents were returning to their homes on Tuesday after a grassfire near Austin caused the evacuation of nearly 200 houses, authorities said.
Some 15 mobile homes burned in the blaze, which started around 4 p.m. on Monday and sent about 100 people to an area shelter at a local middle school.
The fire in Leander, about 25 miles northwest of Austin, burned roughly 30 acres and threatened 189 homes before it was mostly contained on Tuesday morning, said Lexi Maxwell, a public information officer with the Texas Forest Service.
"This one poor mobile home park just took a hard hit," she told Reuters on Tuesday "It's very sad."
Four firefighters were treated for heat-related issues, and one resident received treatment for smoke inhalation, but no other injuries were reported.
Authorities are still trying to determine how and exactly where the fire started, Maxwell said.
Early Tuesday, the evacuees had cleared out of the shelter and most had gone home. Those who couldn't either stayed with family or were sent to hotel rooms provided by the American Red Cross, Maxwell said.
Across the state on Tuesday, forest officials were battling four fires that had burned 2,480 acres collectively, including a 650-acre out-of-control fire in west Texas that threatened oilfield equipment and at least one home.
This wildfire season has been the worst in Texas history, as the state experiences its worst drought since 1854, authorities said.
More than 3,430,734 acres have been charred in 18,068 Texas wildfires since November 2010. This year alone, Texas wildfires have accounted for 33 percent of the blazes across the nation, and more than half of the acreage that has burned nationwide.
As of Friday, some 2,481 homes and buildings in the Lone Star State have been lost since the season began, and another 34,666 saved.
Those numbers do not include fires over the weekend or the Austin-area fire on Monday.
All but five of the state's 254 counties are under burn bans, and wildfires have cropped up in at least 192 counties during the season.
Firefighters are managing 44 large wildfires nationwide on Tuesday, according to the national fire incident information system.
(Editing by Jerry Norton)