Nearly one year after the Welder Fire tore through Sinton, families like Barbara Funke\u2019s are rebuilding and reflecting on resilience.<\/p>\n
CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas \u2014 It has been nearly one year since the Welder Fire ripped through part of the community of Sinton.<\/p>\n
For Barbara Funke, \u201cWelder\u201d isn\u2019t just the name of the fire \u2014 like for many in Sinton, it\u2019s personal.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo a lot of them were in that room that got singed,\u201d she said when showing 3NEWS her old yearbooks that were burned in the fire.<\/p>\n
Funke taught at Welder Elementary during the early 2000s. She never thought the name would take on a different meaning \u2014 or that she would be one of the many families having to rebuild because of it.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey came in a tore the house down and then cleared the lot. And then started getting the plans together and started building,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Michael Gillitzer lives nearby.<\/p>\n
He said while he didn\u2019t lose his home, driving through the neighborhood the next day \u2014 given the conditions \u2014 it was clear to see why the fire became so widespread so quickly.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust literally half the neighborhood was gone,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen I first heard about it I was kind of like this is the worst day to have a fire. Because I remember we were in the middle of the drought and it was high winds that day.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Funke, as she continues moving into her new house, she is reminded that while things can be replaced, calling Sinton home is still something to be proud of.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow everybody was helping everybody and checking on everybody and trying to save what they could,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nearly one year after the Welder Fire tore through Sinton, families like Barbara Funke\u2019s are rebuilding and reflecting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":187869,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[155,157,156],"class_list":["post-187868","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-corpus-christi","tag-corpus-christi","tag-corpus-christi-headlines","tag-corpus-christi-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187868"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187868\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/187869"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}