Victoria Advocate
PALACIOS, Texas — Less than a week before Thanksgiving, a family lost its only daughter: a 2-year-old girl named Analyah Moreno.
For Midfield Fire Chief Vic Collins and his team of firefighters, Sunday morning’s tragedy is one that will haunt them forever.
“Most of the men and women in my fire department are parents themselves,” he said Monday. “It hits hard, especially when it’s a baby like that — an innocent life.”
About 1:30 a.m. Sunday, the Midfield Fire Department responded to a call for assistance in a fully involved fire with a possible child inside.
“You could hear the urgency” in the dispatcher’s voice, he said.
Also called to help the Palacios Fire Department to extinguish the blaze were the fire departments of Blessing and Tres Palacios Oaks.
“When we got there, it had pretty much destroyed everything,” he said.
In the heat of it all, a couple of Collins’ men found Analyah and pulled her lifeless body from the flames — then wept.
“They took that very hard,” he said.
Hours later, when the four departments finally finished putting out the fire with only scorched debris remaining, they circled together, led by Collins in prayer.
“We prayed for the family, we prayed for this little girl as she entered the gates of heaven, and we prayed for each other,” he said. “It didn’t matter what agency you were with — we were praying for that family.”
Coming together after a fire to pray was not a normal occurrence, said Collins, who has served as fire chief for 14 years.
“Being small fire departments like all of us are, we don’t deal with a lot of those types of fires where people die in them,” he said.
Still, Collins found inspiration buried beneath the rubble.
“It was just amazing that in this tragedy — I mean that’s what it is, a tragedy — we came together as a team and just worked together to do what we could do,” he said. “It was like we were one agency.”
When Collins returned home about 5 a.m. that morning, he didn’t go to sleep.
Instead, “I sat there and couldn’t wait for my kids to wake up so I could hug them.”
The fire is still under investigation by the State Fire Marshal’s Office, but Palacios volunteer Fire Marshal Dale Porter said, “No arson is suspected at all.”
Porter said Ana Moreno and her husband, Adolfo, had experienced electric problems in the trailer home they were renting, which Ana said had no smoke detector or home owner’s insurance.
For this reason, Porter said state fire marshals are leaning toward ruling it an electrical accident but have yet to do so.
The Morenos are staying with Ana’s mother in Palacios with their 5-month-old son, Alonzo, who survived the fire.
The American Red Cross scheduled a meeting with the family Monday evening to get a better understanding of what is needed, said MaryJane Mudd, communications officer for the nonprofit’s Texas Gulf Coast Region.
In the meantime, the surrounding communities are doing what they can to help.
As of 7 p.m. Monday, the family’s Gofundme account had raised $2,905 since initially posted Sunday afternoon.
“We know where that little girl is going - she’s going to heaven,” Collins said. “She’s already there, and she’ll be waiting for her parents when they get there.”
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