‘There was nothing we could do’: Horrified neighbors watch homes burn in Tarrant County
The morning after fire rapidly tore through a Rendon neighborhood and destroyed three homes in south Tarrant County, smoke still rose from piles of marled debris.
Unrecognizable metal structures rose up from ruins. Charred clothes and CDs were piled near a burned electrical pole. Look close enough and you’ll see a charred riding lawn mower, the remnants of a shed and a few water bottles strewn about.
Everything else is a bit difficult to make out. Residents on Wednesday morning were still making sense of what they saw.
Officials with the Rendon Fire Department say the blaze affected eight homes and other structures. No injuries were reported.
The community about 20 minutes south of Fort Worth has few stop lights, a roadside corner store and barbecue joint. In the neighborhood itself, strangers catch the eye of residents, said resident Debbie Elrod as she sat with her nextdoor neighbor, Wendy Nail, on the porch. Nail lives across the street from the fire site.
Nail was at her in-laws’ house Tuesday evening when she got a call from an elderly neighbor saying her house was on fire.
At first, she couldn’t believe it.
“I was just like, ‘What?’” Nail said. “Because I just drove by here, I’m like how can that be?”
Nail blitzed to the scene within five or six minutes and found the whole house up in flames.
Elrod said there were more firetrucks in the neighborhood than she’d ever seen. The couple who lived in the house was taken in by Red Cross, Nail said.
It was a devastating tragedy that has brought the neighborhood even closer. Elrod said they’re talking about putting a fundraiser together for the couple. Members of nearby churches came in to help out, too.
When the fire broke out, Nail evacuated but her husband stayed behind to water the grass and make sure flames didn’t reach their home. Late Wednesday morning, another neighbor on the opposite side of the burned property watered the perimeter of another yard to keep potential flames from crossing over.
There are different accounts for how the fire started. WFAA-TV reported Tarrant County fire officials said the fire had started in the kitchen.
Nail and another neighbor, Heather Uselton, said they heard the fire started in a bedroom because of an AC window unit. Nail was told by the household resident a window AC unit began sparking and caught a curtain on fire before igniting the rest of the house. The resident tried to extinguish the fire but said it moved too fast, Nail said.
At the back of the site is where Uselton’s family lives. Her husband was coming back from walking the dogs when he saw the smoke billowing out of their neighbor’s home. Uselton called 911.
Uselton’s husband and son ran over to make sure the couple was out of their home, and then they watched the house go up in flames.
The fire climbed a nearby electrical pole by the Useltons’ home that began shooting down sparks onto grass that hadn’t seen rain in ages. Uselton, who was in the yard with a hose, couldn’t get to everything fast enough.
“It started taking everything,” she said. “There was nothing we could do.”
Soon enough, Uselton tossed the kids and dogs in the car. They left without shutting the front door.
“Just her house going up knowing there’s going to be nothing left, it’s heartbreaking,” Uselton said as she choked up. “Just knowing there’s nothing you can do, that it’s that close to your house. It’s like an act of God that it didn’t do anything.”
When the Uselton family returned Wednesday morning, they were thankful nothing in the house smelled like smoke. The family still didn’t have power as of late morning.
A sprinkler was still spinning in the family’s back yard to ward off any remaining flames. A wire from the burned electrical pole lay in the yard. Around the house, yellowed grass was burned in a semi-circle just yards from the home, as though a force had somehow held it back.
And in the pile of mangled material at the site, a small patch of flames kept burning.
This story was originally published July 27, 2022 at 2:32 PM.
