Four departments battle 25-acre fire

By Kristin Edwards
Staff Reporter

December 09, 2008 01:20 am

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Firefighters from four Walker County fire departments spent several hours in Riverside on Monday extinguishing a 25-acre fire which damaged a pasture, two structures and four vehicles.
With the assistance of the Texas Forest Service, the group managed to stop the fire — which grew due to high winds and dry conditions — from damaging two nearby homes.
“It was a long, hard day,” said Huntsville firefighter Jeremy O’Neill. “The fire, which was in a pasture at the dead end of Jim White Road off (state) Highway 19, got up to about 25 acres, and we spent close to four hours on scene.
“We initially thought there was a person in one of the homes that was being threatened by the fire, but it turned out that the structure was empty and no injuries resulted from the fire.”
O’Neill said three trucks from the Huntsville Fire Department, four trucks from the Riverside Fire Department, one truck from the Dodge Fire Department and one truck from the Trinity Fire Department responded to the fire.
Altogether, approximately 20 to 25 firefighters were involved in controlling the flames.
“One of the residents near the pasture walked outside, saw the whole pasture on fire and reported it to us,” O’Neill said. “By the time we got there, there was a storage barn, a storage shed and four vehicles on fire in addition to the pasture itself.
“The Texas Forest Service completed a plow line all the way around the fire to cut it off.
“After the fire was out, the barn had been completely burned down and the shed was burned on one side, but we were able to stop the flames before they got to two nearby houses.”
O’Neill said an investigation into what caused the fire will most likely be conducted in the near future.
“We’re not sure how the fire was started — it’s undetermined at this point because, when we got there, there was too much fire to be able to tell what had happened,” he said.
In addition to the nine fire trucks and the Texas Forest Service unit that responded to the fire, a Huntsville-Walker County EMS unit also responded to the scene.