Copyright 2006 San Antonio Express-News
All Rights Reserved
By LOMI KRIEL and SHEILA HOTCHKIN
San Antonio Express-News (Texas)
Several brush fires raged across the Hill Country and through counties southwest of San Antonio on Saturday, scorching more than 6,000 acres after earlier leaving one person dead and two hospitalized.
In Kerr County, two fires burned for more than a day, threatening several area homes, before firefighters had them contained.
One began north of Ingram on the Hill Country Youth Ranch, a residential program for disadvantaged children. That fire burned about 150 acres and came close to populated areas, sparking the evacuation of a couple dozen homes, firefighters said.
No structures were lost and no one injured, although the fire often came close.
“It came to the back fences of a couple houses,” said Chief Ray Lynch of the Ingram Volunteer Fire Department.
Rowan Zachry, the Ingram city marshal, said firefighters managed to cut off the fire before it reached homes in the Ingram Hills area. He said firefighting efforts were particularly complicated by rough terrain and low humidity, even with help from the state and about a dozen local fire departments.
About 10 miles west of Ingram in Hunt, a much larger fire burned about 3,600 acres in a sparsely populated area between Texas 39 and FM 1340.
“We lost some trailer houses or some travel trailers people had stashed back there,” said Chief Danny Feller of the Hunt Volunteer Fire Department said. “We came real close to losing one home, but we got away with real minor damage.”
In San Antonio, a brush fire erupted around noon in the Highland Hills area, on the East Side, and smoldered for about four hours before firefighters contained it, said Fire Department District Chief Randy Jenkins.
The fire, which claimed about 100 acres, spared homes and the buildings of Highlands High School, Jenkins said. No one was hurt.
But further southwest, a fire that started Friday and raced across 2,500 acres in northwestern Uvalde County appeared to be the reason behind the death of Leonardo Flores Hernandez, a Mexican in his late 40s, said Sheriff Terry Crawford.
Hernandez was found near County Road 415 on Friday evening, close to a bulldozer he had been operating.
The fire, which seems to have started from debris burning, raged for more than 15 hours before it was contained Saturday morning.
Uvalde authorities activated their emergency operations center and contacted the Texas Forest Service for assistance in fighting the blaze, made difficult to contain by the region’s hilly terrain, Crawford said. The fire destroyed several mobile homes.
In Medina County, firefighters struggled with a brush fire that started around 3:30 p.m. Friday and didn’t end until nearly 15 hours later, said Sheriff Gilbert Rodriguez.
The fire destroyed about 500 acres between Hondo and Yancey and sent two Yancey volunteer firefighters to Brooke Army Medical Center with second- and third-degree burns. Authorities would not release their names but said one was in critical condition and the other appeared stable.