McALLEN — A fire broke out inside of a house just before noon on Tuesday.
The McAllen Fire Department responded to a call at approximately 11:41 for a house on fire in the Legacy gated community located at the 5600 block of Cynthia Street.
“Upon our arrival, it looks like it was in the garage area,” said MFD assistant fire chief and public information officer Jim Schultz. “Our crews pulled down their line and started attacking the fire.”
Schultz said that there was one person home when the fire started, but he was able to make it out of the home unscathed. At the time of the fire, the family’s pet dog was unaccounted for. Fortunately, Schults reported that the dog was found safe.
“The dog was saved and returned to the owners,” Schultz said. “The dog was really happy to see them.”
Along with MFD, the McAllen Police Department and the Edinburg Fire Department also responded to the fire. At least one firefighter was taken by ambulance to a nearby hospital for burns sustained to the back of his hand.
The fire was contained somewhere between 12:15 p.m. and 12:30 p.m. The fire damage was confined to the garage area of the house, but there was some smoke damage throughout the rest of the house.
The MFD will now begin the investigation process to determine the antecedent to the fire.
“The process we use is we go and we look from the least burned to the most burned,” Schultz explained. “We work it back that way and we find an area of origin. We get it all the way down to a point of origin, and then we start looking for possible causes in the area right there where the fire started.”
Schultz explained that since fire was located in a garage, it could make the investigation more difficult due to the amount of stuff that’s stored inside the garage.
“(The investigation) can last maybe two or three days, depending on if they have to send off samples to get analyzed,” Schultz said. “Sometimes they get really lucky and they trace it back to one spot with one item or one piece of equipment or one outlet in the area. So it’s pretty easy to narrow it down. Other times they can keep searching but they never do find it. It varies from a couple of days to maybe a week or two.”
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