Paul Cunningham, the Sheriff of Montague County in North Texas, said one couple died when fire overtook their home and another woman died after calling for an ambulance as a fire spread through an unincorporated part of the county. The woman's cause of death was unclear.
"We've lost communities, pretty much," Cunningham said. "Stoneburg is pretty much gone."
Parts of Stoneburg still smoldered Friday, including railroad ties under the tracks that bisect the town. The general store was in ruins. A few miles away, the remains of about a half-dozen head of cattle were visible in a charred pasture.
Residents had fled Thursday as flames tore through that town of 51 people and nearby Sunset, population 350.
When Fred Blackwell came back to his 1920s-era brick home in Stoneburg, it bore little resemblance to the two-story building he had known.
"That rock was glowing," said Blackwell, standing amid twisted sheet metal and mounds of ashes. "I knew everything else had been burned down because there was nothing else around it."
"It tore me up," Blackwell said. "... I was hoping it missed. But I kinda had a feeling it didn't. When I saw it, that's a whole different thing there when you see it."
About 70 homes in and around the Oklahoma City suburbs of Midwest City and Choctaw were destroyed by a fire that Midwest City Fire Marshal Jerry Lojka said was arson. He said authorities had not identified any suspects or determined a motive, but said the fire started in an area near a wrecker service that is frequented by teenagers from a nearby school.
There and elsewhere across Oklahoma, more than 160 houses had burned down and 62 people were injured, the Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management said.
Fire investigators were still trying to determine what caused the other Oklahoma fires.
Oklahoma evacuees were allowed to return home Friday. Sammetra Christmon found only a smoking ruin where her home had been in Midwest City.
"The memories, the photos, this is the house I have worked all my life for," she said Friday. Her 9-year-old daughter took it hard.
"She's devastated, just in tears this morning," Christmon said. "This is the only house she's ever known."
