A burnt car sits in front of a house that has been razed to the ground as a wildfire burns out of control near Bastrop
A burnt car sits in front of a house that has been razed to the ground as a wildfire burns out of control near Bastrop Reuters

Texas wildfires continued burning out of control Tuesday, and one official said the fire is a monster and it's zero percent contained.

The wildfires, which have caused billions in damage to Texas' agricultural industry, claimed two lives and destroyed more than 1,000 homes -- and show no signs of yielding anytime soon. The months-long drought is feeding wildfires spurred by winds from Tropical Storm Lee over the weekend.

The brush fires kept Texas Forestry Services officials busy on Sunday, as they responded to 63 new fires burning on more than 32,000 acres -- including 22 new large fires.

Authorities said two people lost their lives on Sunday as a result of the fire.

Reports are that a 20-year-old woman and her child died in their trailer home Sunday near Gladewater, Texas, when they were unable to escape a rapidly growing fire.

Texas Forest Service spokeswoman Jan Amen said the fire is a monster and that it's zero percent contained.

More than 3.6 million acres, or 1.5 million hectares, in Texas have been blackened by wildfires since November. About $5 billion in damages have been done to the state's agricultural industry, according to reports.

Firefighters are doing all they can to try and contain the dozens of wind-fueled fires. Officials have said the Bastrop County Complex fire, east of Austin, which stretched for 16 miles, is the worst of the fires.

The fires forced the evacuation of more than 5,000 people and about five shelters have been set up across the affected area. The state has deployed aircraft, including four heavy tanker planes, to fight the fires.

Mike Ferris, from the U.S. Forest Service, has blamed the weather patterns for Bastrop County's raging fires.

The winds generated by Tropical Storm Lee, which flooded parts of the Gulf Coast over the weekend, have fanned the Bastrop fire. Forecasters predict winds will die down a little on Tuesday, but fire officials said the blaze has extreme growth potential.

The weather today is at its worst, Ferris told ABC News. We had a red flag warning issued this morning for strong gusty winds from anywhere from 15 to 30 mile per hour, in addition to reduced or lowered humidities.

The disaster has commanded the attention of Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who is seeking the Republican Party's presidential nomination, and forced him to cut short a campaign visit to South Carolina on Monday.

Perry returned home to oversee the fire-fighting efforts, and has urged people who were in harm's way to heed evacuation orders.

I'll be real honest with you I'm not paying any attention to politics right now, Perry told ABC News. There's plenty of time to take care of that. People's lives and their possessions are in danger. That's substantially more important.

Perry said he's seen a number of big fires in his life, but this one is as mean looking, as I've ever seen.

Perry said he hopes cooler temperatures and slowing winds on Tuesday would help firefighters make headway in containing the fires across the state.

There's over a thousand homes now that have been lost by these fires ? over 50 fires ? in the state of Texas, Perry said from the state capital of Austin. It's still a very critical and very fluid situation.