Devine Fire is still on the scene of a fire that broke out around 3:05 am this morning, January 22, in a home located at Devine at 600 Jack Nicklaus Drive. Fire crews from Devine and surrounding areas responded as well as Devine Police Department. Sadly the home is a complete loss.
Prayers for all involved.
“Official cause was an electrical short in the outlet. Burnt from inside the wall,” said Devine Fire Chief Greg Atkinson on Monday morning. An electrical cord to a heat lamp was plugged into this outlet the Chief confirmed. He went on to explain, “Yes, but the short doesn’t appear to be a heat lamp related. It could have been a toaster or a microwave, and that outlet could have shorted. The damage was done from inside the wall, not the exterior of the wall. Fuses tripped as they should have, but it had already arced and started inside the wall”.
The home was fully engulfed when the fire department arrived according to the fire chief, “In a matter of minutes. This is a prime example of why we are working toward having paid staff on station 24/7. That would have cut 5 minutes off our response, and this would have been a room and contents fire instead of a full structure,” said Chief Atkinson.
The call to the Devine Police Department came in at 3:05 a.m. Monday morning January 22, 2024. The couple, Christian and Derilyn Pompa were able to escape safely with their two young children.
The devastating news spread quickly and several friends have already started raising funds to help them. Both graduated from Devine High School, still have family here and are active in the community.
“It’s very devastating, but we are very thankful they are alive,” said Derilyn’s mother Susie Stacy.
“Our ESD and VFD continue to try to raise funds to where we can be a combination department and cut our response times down for this exact reason. Everyone responding from home just adds precious time to the response. The volunteers have done nothing wrong, but having people on station already cuts down on time,” said Chief Atkinson.”Our volunteers responded well trained and noble as always. It just simply wasn’t fast enough this time. My heart goes out to the family. They are good people.”