By Francisco E. Jimenez and Matt Wilson
“It was like hell,” Jose Ibarra said Tuesday evening, standing with his family on Concepcion Avenue a few miles south of Moore Field Road in rural Hidalgo County.
He was standing several yards away from what, until a few hours before, had been the home of his mother and grandmother.
The scene Ibarra painted did sound awfully hellish.
A fire that afternoon claimed the life of Ibarra’s grandmother and sent his mother to San Antonio with severe injuries, Alton Fire Chief John Salinas said Tuesday evening.
Tired-looking firefighters covered in sweat and soot toted axes and pry bars that afternoon from what was left of the home where 89-year-old Gregoria Lara lived with Consuela Azua, Ibarra’s mother.
The fire gutted the mobile home and its add ons. Emergency crews hacked away at most of the rest, Ibarra said, struggling for the better part of an hour to extinguish it.
A neighbor a couple of doors down described the conflagration. She saw an older woman laying on the ground outside the fire, which started a little after 4 p.m. Tuesday. She heard the screaming while people tried to get the woman away from the flames.
Yvette Garcia, another area resident and cat enthusiast, saw flames shooting out of the structure while she was passing by Tuesday afternoon. She called her parents, who lived nearer to the home. They called the fire department.
“It was from the bottom of the mobile home actually, it was from the bottom,” Garcia said. “I don’t know if it was the stove maybe or — I don’t know.”
By 6 p.m. the fire was extinguished. A truck from AEP and a Crime Scene Investigation Unit from the Hidalgo County Sheriff’s Office had arrived, and firefighters from surrounding communities had begun to pack up.
The home was described by authorities as a total loss.
A car parked in front of the home had melted into a pile of slag, Ibarra said. His grandmother’s room had simply vanished.
“It’s like it didn’t even exist. It’s amazing how fast the fire just ate everything.”
The only things Ibarra seemed to find in the ashes and the rubble were questions and concern.
It was an older home; maybe faulty wiring had ignited the blaze, he speculated. Perhaps someone left a candle burning. He suspects the blaze began in his grandmother’s room.
“We don’t know what happened,” Ibarra said.
Both women were severely injured in the fire.
Alton Fire Chief John Salinas said the younger woman, Azua, suffered burns on 30% of her body. Ibarra described those burns as being mostly on his mother’s arms and legs. Those injuries necessitated her being flown to San Antonio later in the day.
The older woman, Salinas said, suffered burns on 80% of her body.
“She’s an elder person, so…” Ibarra said, taking a breath. “She’s 89.”
Someone had told Ibarra that when Lara was pulled away she was barely breathing. He didn’t know yet that she wouldn’t make it through the night.
Ibarra was on his way to DHR to see his grandmother. His sister, he said, was heading to McAllen Medical Center to visit their mother.
Ibarra’s brow was creased with worry. He was holding a pampered girl, who looked around curiously.
The actual mobile home is ruins, it’s in ruins,” Ibarra said. “It was an old home, but you look at it right now — it makes you want to cry.”
The home is gone. One of the matriarch’s of Ibarra’s family is dead, the other is in a hospital hundreds of miles away. The family is in dire straits.
Looking around, Ibarra seemed like he was at a loss for words to describe the extent of the tragedy. He returned to that biblical metaphor.
“It looks like hell.”
