Among the 16 homes destroyed by wildfires in Somervell County, five houses belonged to the same family west of Glen Rose.
Over the years, the Brown family built seven homes on the same 200 acres.
Five of the seven burned to the ground on Tuesday.
“This is our family homestead,” Chase Barber said. “My grandfather bought this land after World War II. It’s been in our family for over 60 years and it’s all decimated now.”
Barber’s house was spared but his grandparents’ house, the home he grew up in, and the homes of other assorted family members, are gone.
“It’s a bunch of burned sticks where a beautiful forest used to be,” Barber said. “Our lives changed in the manner of hours. I mean over the course of two or three hours: The fire’s coming. The fire’s here. We have to leave.”
The blaze, known as the Chalk Mountain Fire, has charred more than 6,000 acres since Tuesday. It was just 10% contained as of Wednesday evening.
Now, the family members who are displaced are staying in hotels or with friends and other relatives.
“During times like this family just has to come together,” Barber said. “That’s why we’re here.”
Some but not all of the family members have insurance.
They’ve set up an account on GoFundMe to raise money.
They’ve already made the decision to rebuild, on the same land, and put their lives back together.
“We’ll retap the wells, we’ll get electricity back out of there,” Barber said. “And we’ll rebuild right where we were.”
TEXAS WILDFIRE INCIDENTS
TEXAS BURNING: INSIDE THE STORM
In April 2011, during an extreme drought, four out-of-control wildfires burning in close proximity to each other were dubbed the Possum Kingdom Complex fire. The fires scorched 150,000 acres of parched Texas ranch land and destroyed 150 homes and two churches.
Senior Meteorologist David Finfrock said in the NBC 5 docu-series Inside the Storm: Texas Burning, that at that time the period from August 2010 to July 2011 was the driest 12 consecutive months on record.
Later that summer, in August, a second fire erupted near the lake called the PK 101 Ranch fire. That fire burned more than 6,000 additional acres on the south side of the lake and destroyed nearly 40 more homes.
On Sept. 4, 2011, a massive wildfire erupted in Central Texas. The Bastrop County Complex fire, east of Austin, became the most destructive wildfire in Texas history. More than 1,600 homes and structures were destroyed when 32,000 acres were scorched, including 96% of the 6,565-acre Bastrop State Park. Two people died in the fires.
During that 2011 fire season, the Texas A&M Forest Service said more than 31,000 fires burned more than four million acres across the state and destroyed 2,947 homes.
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