TOW, Texas — A volunteer firefighter died trying to protect his family after their house caught fire Friday afternoon.
KHOU reported that volunteer firefighter Ronald Sanderson, with the Tow Volunteer Fire Department, lived with his wife Tiffany and their three young children.
“We all live out here so when the address went over the radio, we’re all familiar with it. It was one of our own guys,” said Tow Fire Chief Josh Becker. “Once we got into the truck en route we were told, possibly somebody in the house.”
Asst. Chief Price Taylor was part of the first crew to arrive at the home just after 2 p.m.; his first reaction was to try to save his friend, according to the report.
“Got as close as I could to the fire with the hose and realized that there was no entry that could be made in it. Of course Josh was hollering at me the whole time, ‘no you can’t do it, no you can’t do it,’” Taylor said.
“There was no way he was coming back out, the whole house was fully engulfed, had already collapsed on itself,” Becker added.
Firefighter Sanderson, who died saving his family, was one of 12 firefighters with the Tow department and had been a member for 10 years, according to the report.
“From talking to his wife, he was hollering at them bring him water and she says next thing she knows there’s smoke coming into the house,” Chief Becker said. “She opened the back door and grabbed the kids and went out the back door and best we know, he opened the front door to go in and make sure they were out.”
“If you know anything about fires, you know if you get oxygen in the fire, it’s going to go,” Asst. Chief Taylor said. “At that point it was just smoke but as soon as his wife opened that back door and went out and he opened that front, that was it.”
The state fire marshal’s office has finished its investigation but could not pinpoint the cause and origin of the fire, according to the report.