Fire
Moulton Fire Department
Shiner Fire Department

Fire claims home over Labor Day weekend

  • Crews from the Moulton Fire Department, Shiner Fire Department, Moulton Police Department, Lavaca County EMS and the Lavaca County Office of the Texas Department of Emergency Management Department spent two hours battling a blaze late Sunday morning. The two story house on Nelson Street was a complete loss, Fire Chief Tim Koncaba said. The house was not insured.
    Crews from the Moulton Fire Department, Shiner Fire Department, Moulton Police Department, Lavaca County EMS and the Lavaca County Office of the Texas Department of Emergency Management Department spent two hours battling a blaze late Sunday morning. The two story house on Nelson Street was a complete loss, Fire Chief Tim Koncaba said. The house was not insured.

Fire chief Tim Koncaba said he was just about to drive over to Shiner to grab some dinner plates from the church picnic happening there.

But Koncaba couldn’t tell you what the stew or sauerkraut was like this year because he never made that trek in time for plates.

Lucky thing, too.

Because when that first fire alarm came across at about 10:25 a.m. Sunday, he was precisely where he was needed most right then.

He didn’t even need the address repeated because even as he stepped out of his house, seconds later, a thick column of black smoke had already pinpointed the place precisely.

The entire structure was engulfed in flames when the fire chief says he rolled up to John Winshard’s two-story house located at 206 W. Nelson, just seven minutes later., a place where Moulton’s 17 volunteer firemen teamed up with an 11-man fire squad out of Shiner to battle the flames and sheer heat exhaustion for the next couple of hours, as the cool of morning quickly turned to triple-digits once more. Between the extreme heat this summer almost no rain for months now, there was a real concern about keeping the blaze contained, at minimum.

“It’s been so hot and dry lately, something like that could get out of hand quick,” Koncaba said.

Across town, Moulton police officer Greg Prasek was dealing with something entirely different but very much related.

He, too, happened to be in the right place, right time, or so it seemed. And he just happened to be driving past on patrols when he spotted the flames leaping off the porch.

What was worse, Officer Prasek soon discovered, was that Jenna Perry—one of two young women who lived at the Nelson Street address with their children—was trapped on the second floor as the flames leapt higher and hotter with each passing moment.

A church goer and construction worker from across the street at the Lutheran church offered up a ladder from the back of his truck to get her down, as both the police officer and the Good Samaritan were soon rushing headlong toward the fire for the rescue.

Prasek had already been up and down the burning house aboard the young man’s ladder to pull Perry to safety.

As the fire chief pulled up with the first of the firetrucks Sunday, an ambulance was pulling away to get Perry to the hospital for smoke inhalation treatments. Koncaba said he ran into the woman the next day, as he finished his fire reports.

Amazingly, she managed it get out of there without getting any burns or other serious injuries, Koncaba reported.

Perry was the only resident there when the fire occurred. The fire’s cause remains under investigation.