By Allan Jamail
On October 10, 2024 at about 12 noon, I observed a large thick black smoke plume several thousands of feet high northeast of Jacinto City. I soon began my investigative photojournalism work to determine the location of the fire.
In a matter of 10-15 minutes after I began, as I drove in the general direction of the smoke north of IH-10 and east of Maxey Road, I located the fire.
Upon my arrival in the 12500 block of Church Road in Houston, I began snapping photos of about 40 Houston firefighters dressed out in their full bunker gear. Because of the need for more water than a fire pumper truck has on board, to fight that size of a fire they had to hookup five-inch hoses between the fire hydrant and the pumper truck, which came from station E-53.
Firefighters battling the blazing hot fire began connecting smaller fire hoses from the fire truck and dragged them some 600 feet from the fire truck towards the hot fire. Because of the intensely extreme heat from the fire, the firefighters couldn’t get any closer than about 300-400 feet.
So they used special long-distance fire nozzles to blast the fire with hundreds of thousands of gallons of water.
The underground water line feeding the fire hydrant couldn’t supply enough water to the fire truck feeding the firemen’s hoses, so the HFD District Fire Chief on the scene called in extra pumper trucks from all over the district and beyond. Fire trucks as far away as from Houston’s Fifth Ward and the Friendswood area arrived, as well as others from stations E-53, 19, 43, 20, 27, 23, 42, 93, 44 and more.
These pumper trucks spread out, making a fire truck assembly line connecting to each other on Maxey Road going north and south of the Church Road intersection some 3 blocks in both directions. These extra fire trucks began hooking up to fire hydrants along Maxey Road and hooked up their hoses in the fire trucks assembly line to help boost water pressure down to the fire.
Firefighters working closest to the fire began getting colleagues to relieve them, because it was obvious they were overheating from the outdoor temperature of 95 degrees F coupled with the heavy firefighting bunker gear and being close to the intense heat from the blaze. The overheating firefighters shed their bunker gear and laid out on the ground to cool down.
I asked HFD’s Fire Captain Chad Cornelius about what was burning, and he said they didn’t yet know exactly at my time of asking, because they couldn’t get near enough to the blaze to determine the source.
I then located Oscar Flamenco, the property owner, and asked what caused the fire. He said he wasn’t on the property when the fire began, but one of his employees told him that another employee was burning wood scraps in a barrel and left it burning and went to lunch. Flamenco assumed the wind must have blown embers into nearby stacks of wooden pallets.
Flamenco told me that he has a trucking business and stores old cars, furniture, and mostly thousands of wooden pallets he sells from there. The worker who supposedly started the fire had left, so I couldn’t interview him.
Nearby residents were complaining about Flamenco’s business being near their homes due to his storage of vehicles, pallets, and other junk which attracts rats to their homes.
After several hours with the fire still going strong, I left the scene planning to return the next day once the fire was put out to take more photos.
At the end of Church Road is the Morning Star Baptist Church.
