KENNEDALE, Texas (AP) - Rancher Dean Dillard was able to save his 72-year-old mother's home by soaking the land before fires roared through his hometown. Many of his neighbours weren't as lucky.

Wildfires fuelled by dry brush and driven by gusty wind damaged scores of homes as they raced across Texas and Oklahoma Tuesday, leaving one person dead and forcing a small town to evacuate.

"It looked like we had been bombed in a big war, the whole city was on fire everywhere," said Dillard, whose town of Cross Plains, about 240 kilometres southwest of Dallas, had 25 homes and a church burned. The town's 1,000 residents were told to leave.

Drought and windy conditions help set the stage for the wildfires, which authorities believe were mainly set by people ignoring fire bans and burning trash, shooting fireworks or tossing cigarettes on the crunchy, brown grass.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry deployed state firefighters and issued a disaster declaration after at least 73 fires were reported burning in the northern and central parts of the state. Firefighters from at least three other states were called in to help.

"It's like trying to stop a 30-mph (50 km/h) car coming down the street," Texas Deputy Fire Marshal Keith Ebel said. "The wind is the worst enemy right now."

In Cooke County, near the Texas-Oklahoma border, an elderly woman was killed, said Texas Forest Service spokeswoman Traci Weaver. No details were available.

The flames were so bad in Cross Plains that firefighters couldn't fight all the blazes at once. Dillard, a former city councilman, spent the day fighting fires with neighbours.

"Houses are just burned down that nobody could ever get to," Dillard said. "Instantly, there were 15 or 20 houses on fire at same time and no way to get around to all of them."

In Oklahoma, the biggest fire burned at least 160 hectares in a rural area near the town of Mustang, southwest of Oklahoma City.

After the flames passed, residents emerged and were "watering their yards and standing in their yards," said Harold Percival, who lives about one and a half kilometres from the Mustang fire.

"It just kept jumping. I've never seen anything like it," said Maria Vantour-Smith. They were able to remove a few antiques and other items from the home before it was gutted.