Grab in Kingsville
KINGSVILLE (Kiii News) – An elderly woman was rescued by firefighters when her home in the 300 block of East C Avenue caught fire sometime before 3:45 a.m. Wednesday morning.
Stephanie Medina got an early-morning phone call telling her that her great grandmother’s house was on fire. Medina, who lives right behind her great grandmother’s house, rushed over screaming and fearing the worst.
“The flames and stuff were coming throughout here, so when we came out of our house, we saw everything through that way and we didn’t know what was going on inside,” Medina said.
Medina and her husband tried to get into her grandmother’s house from the laundry room, but the doors were locked and there was smoke everywhere.
Medina’s grandmother is 95-year old Nena Trevino, and Medina wasn’t the only one worried for her safety. A next-door neighbor feared for her as well.
“When I saw all the smoke coming out of the attic and on the side of the house, I informed the fire department that there was an elderly lady in the back room of the house,” neighbor Oscar Reyes said. “My main concern was their safety, because if they hadn’t gotten in as quickly as they did, I was getting ready to break a window to get her up and try and get her out.”
“The smoke was already very law at that time, so they crawled in and they located the woman, who was awake and conscious,” Kingsville Fire Chief Joey Reed said. “They had to drag her out of the building, with the heavy smoke.”
An elderly man, Manuel Trevino, lives in a garage apartment in front of the house, close to where the fire started.
“When I woke up, it was full of smoke and there was nothing on fire. I don’t know what happened,” Trevino said. “I went to the kitchen and there’s a bunch of smoke everywhere, but I thought it was my eyesight that was going bad.”
Fortunately Manuel Trevino was able to get out of the house and is okay.
Nena Trevino was taken to Christus Spohn Kleberg Hospital and later flown to San Antonio to be treated for smoke inhalation. Meanwhile, firefighters say the cause of the fire appears to be electrical. Chief Reed said it started at the base of a water heater.