Mineral Wells Area News

Firefighters responded to a grass fire call on Pleasant Valley Road before the situation rapidly escalated, requiring resources from multiple agencies.

“It started as a grass fire, was escalated to a grass fire with structures threatened,” said Palo Pinto County Fire Chief Danny Watkins. “We went to the working alarm.”

The situation intensified when flames reached a nearby home at 1226 Pleasant Valley Road.

“It lit the structure on fire so we upgraded it to our first alarm assignment for our structure fire response,” Watkins said.

Fire crews found themselves battling two distinct threats simultaneously.

“Once the company’s got on location, just because we were limited to man power and we were kind of fighting two different animals at the same time, it went to a second alarm,” explained Watkins.

The plan of attack proved effective in limiting damage.

“We operated in an offensive mode and both the structure fire and the grass fire damage was limited to the home because we operated in an offensive mode and the grass fire is limited to less than 2 acres,” he said.

Multiple departments contributed to the firefighting effort.

“TFS is on location, Engine five, mineral Wells engine, one tender, eight tender 16, engine 13, Sacred cross, Sacred cross operations, mineral Wells, chief one and two and Palano county chief one, loan camp brush seven, Palo Pinto brush five and tender five are all on location,” Watkins reported. “We filled our full alarm second alarm response. We also have truck one, engine 15 and big brush 15 on location.”

Two firefighters were injured during the operation and were being observed by Sacred Cross. Chief Watkins was unaware if they went to the hospital or not.

Watkins credited the successful containment to their approach: “We threw the kitchen sink at it. We were very aggressive with it—aggressive tactics get aggressive results and that’s what we want. We kept the fire small and we were able to save structure.”