The Gazette-Enterprise

GUADALUPE COUNTY — The area was under fire Friday.

Two structure fires kept firefighters busy on opposite ends of the county, sending one patient to the hospital, gutting a home and destroying a barn full of hay.

Out on the southwestern end of the county, multiple volunteer departments worked to contain a blaze that sent a woman by helicopter to Brooke Army Medical Center with burns.

New Berlin VFD Chief Kurt Strey said the department was called out to the 3300 block of Sandy Elm Road for a medical emergency and possible structure fire.

As the first on the scene, Strey said there were two houses and when entering the first one there was no visible flames, a faint smell of smoke and no patient.

“I went to the second house, there I found the patient with burns to the upper portions of her body and she was having difficulty breathing,” he said. “I would say that it was second degree burns on the upper left side of her torso, arms and face. I would guess it covered about 40 percent of her body.”

Strey made the call for the woman to be airlifted.

When exiting the house to radio for Air Life, flames became visible in the garage attached to the first house, Strey said.

The two-story wood-framed house made the fire difficult to fight and the contents of the garage didn’t help.

“What made it worse was that there was apparently some flammable liquids in the garage that allowed the fire to progress more rapidly than normal,” he said.

Strey said it took fire crews roughly an hour and a half to control the fire but the job did not end there.

“There is a lot of overhaul, additional actions that we had to take, so, we probably stayed on scene for about four hours or so,” he said. “We have been running back and forth to check on it and I know one of the crews was out there [Saturday] morning putting out some hot spots.”

Sutherland Springs, La Vernia, Lake Dunlap and County Line helped fight the fire

“We had a lot of help from numerous agencies and we greatly appreciate their assistance,” he said.

While the fire is still under investigation, Strey said it appears to be accidental.

“We were told that she was working on some sort of craft and she may have been using solder in the process,” he said. “The only thing we know was that the patient apparently got her injuries due to a minor explosion.”

Earlier Friday the Seguin Fire Department was called out to Seitz Road at 9:30 a.m. for a structure fire.

Lt. Mark Kublank said upon arrival they found a large metal building swallowed in thick smoke with a large source of fuel for the fire.

“We found that there was 175 round bales of hay stored there,” he said.

Multiple strategies were used to try to extinguish the blaze but in the end letting it burn out was the best, Kublank said.

“They took some tractors and pulled the metal off the sides of the building to try to gain access. We put enough water on there to knock the fire down a little bit but it would just pick right back up as soon as we quit spraying it,” he said. “And because hay burns hot and it was so deep in there, it was apparent that it was one of those that would have to burn itself out.”

To assist in containing the blaze, Kublank said volunteers from McQueeney, Sand Hills and Marion Fire Departments were on hand.

Those blazes followed a Thursday fire on Campbell Street in Seguin which damaged the rear portion of a home.

Fire crews were called just before 8 p.m. Thursday for what is believed to be an out-of-control cooking fire.

Seguin Fire Battalion Chief Gerald Weniger said firefighters arrived in the 800 block of Campbell St. to find a small house in flames.

“It was fully involved,” he said. “Most of the damage was to the back of the house.”

Weniger said that, while knocking down the flames, firefighters found that the house had been added on to and the older section in front had highly flammable cedar shingles in the attic.

“We got the fire knocked out in 15 or 20 minutes, but we didn’t consider it under control for about 45 minutes,” he said. “Because of the cedar shingles, we wanted to be sure everything was out of that attic area.”

Weniger said the occupants of the house got out before firefighters arrived and no one was injured. He said it was possible that the fire started from hot grease on the stove.

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