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Live updates: Texas, Oklahoma Smokehouse Creek Fire
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Frank Probst bought his home in Fritch, Texas, six months ago, and on Tuesday watched it enveloped in flames in his rearview mirror as his family evacuated from an encroaching wildfire.
“My grandson had hollered at me about a fire, and I turned around and the flames were kind of rolling up over the roof behind me,” Probst said of his home in Fritch, roughly 40 miles northeast of Amarillo. An official has said “quite a few structures” were destroyed in Fritch, which also was dealing with power and gas outages.
Probst said he immediately went to check on his elderly neighbors right as the evacuation sirens went off Tuesday. They focused on getting the neighbors out first, and they were the last ones out, he said.
“It was in the rearview mirror. The flames rolled and it took my whole neighborhood at once,” Probst said of his Fritch home.
Probst’s family wasn’t able to grab any of their belongings before they had to rush to safety, he said.
“It happened so quick. By the time the evacuation sirens went off, it was too late,” he said.
With fire still surrounding the nearby roads, Probst said he, his wife, and their 6-year-old grandson had to sleep in the parking lot of a local grocery store Tuesday night.
Probst on Wednesday returned to where his home once stood.
“It’s all gone,” he said.
The Probst family is staying at a motel in Amarillo for now, and he said most of the homes they passed to get there have been destroyed.
“Entire neighborhoods just gone,” Probst said.
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