A devastating fire left a neighborhood in ruins, with only three of 12 homes rebuilt.
SINTON, Texas — March 4th marks one year since the Welder Fire tore through part of Sinton destroying and damaging homes in a few hours. But in the time since, SInton has shown the power of resilience and coming together.
The neighborhood in front of Welder Elementary still bears the scars of a fire that nearly destroyed the entire community, leaving behind only pieces where homes once stood tall.
For Sinton Volunteer Fire Department firefighter Clemente Sanchez, it’s a reminder that his family’s home nearly slipped away in the flames.
“Don’t ever take anything for granted, because in the blink of an eye it could all be taken away,” Sanchez said. “Angels were watching over our house. Seeing the fire just rise from this side and go across, I don’t know, 10 to 15 feet above my house, and just go across and come down over there and start running back this way — we can’t explain it. We don’t know why. In 48 years of fighting fires, I’ve never seen anything like that.”
Sanchez said it took $30,000, help from the community and nearly a year for his home to be rebuilt.
“The fire started on the outside up near the attic vent. It came in through there. It burned my living room area, and then it just burned backward toward the back of the house into my dining room and into my utility room,” Sanchez said. “And then, of course, when they were fighting the fire in the house, I had a lot of water damage.”
On Hamilton Street, the loss is still visible. Twelve homes were destroyed — only three have been rebuilt. Nine families chose to sell and start over somewhere else.
Matthew Harrington and his family were among the families that didn’t rebuild.
“We’re in the process of selling the lot. It’s been on the market now for probably eight to nine months since the fire,” Harrington said. “We moved into another house here in Sinton just a couple of months after the fire. We moved quickly. We found a house we really liked. We really wanted to get our kids back to a sense of normal.”
Harrington and his family have moved on, but they still remember their home of 19 years.
“You know, it brought up a lot of memories today seeing some old pictures come up and stuff like that people talk about, of course,” Harrington said. “But I’m glad everybody’s safe, and we all still keep in touch with each other.”
Lives were forever changed in just a few hours, but Sanchez said the most important thing wasn’t lost.
“We need to count our blessings because there were no lives lost. Everybody got out safely. That’s the biggest thing. The homes and all these things can be replaced, but we can’t replace a human body,” Sanchez said.
A year later, the scars remain, and this neighborhood will never be the same.