Killeen firefighters and emergency crews were called to a largely undeveloped area near the intersection of Stagecoach Road and Rein Drive shortly before 1:30 p.m. for the grassfire.
Fire crews staged at the Church of the Nazarene and rolled heavy brush and pumper trucks across the dry field where the fire burned about 500 feet from the rear of the church.
Northeast of the church, residents of Rein Drive doused the bone-dry field behind their homes hoping to keep the various patches of fires at bay.
Within a half hour of the fire being reported, Killeen Police officials were working to evacuate a number of Rein Drive residents.
“So far, we’ve evacuated four homes,” Killeen Fire Chief Jerry Gardner said 30 minutes into the fire.
At that time, Gardner estimated about 75 acres had burned, and only a handful of homes had been evacuated.
However, with a brisk tail wind, homeowners living less than a mile north of the fire found themselves being asked by police officers to voluntarily evacuate their homes.
Jamie Johnson, whose husband is deployed with the 4th ID to Iraq, watched from her front driveway on Omar Drive as thick white smoke filled an otherwise clear blue sky.
“What am I going to do with my animals?” Mrs. Johnson asked when she learned from neighbors she might have to evacuate. “What am I going to do if my house burns down? I am here by myself.”
As Mrs. Johnson stared in disbelief, her neighbor, Sandra Maldonado, watered the high grass that borders the Johnsons’ home.
Mrs. Maldonado’s husband, a Fort Hood soldier, knocked on doors of the residents living on Omar Drive, warning them of the pending voluntary evacuation.
North of there, students from Reeces Creek Elementary School were evacuated beginning at about 2:15 p.m. “That’s when they made the decision, but the fire had been going on before that,” said Bob Massey, public information officer for Killeen schools.
School district officials said there were no injuries, and 23 buses were used to move the children to the special events center on South W.S. Young Drive, where parents with proper identification could pick up their child.
“It was a little over 1,000 kids,” Massey said. “It was pretty amazing. It took only 25 minutes to get the kids on the buses and to the center.”
School will resume today.
By 3:45 p.m. Tuesday firefighters had contained the blaze. The cause of the fire is still under investigation.
