Fire destroyed a home in Austin Sunday morning, leaving its owner displaced.
Austin Fire Department crews responded to a call at 6:46 a.m. about a structure fire in the 500 block of Eighth Avenue Northeast. Firefighters arrived to find the home fully engulfed by fire, said Austin Fire Chief Jim McCoy.
“There was heavy fire on two floors and coming out of about every window in the house,” McCoy said. Five fire trucks with 21 firefighters responded and battled the blaze for roughly five hours, McCoy said. “The homeowner was out of the house, so it was a defensive-only fire. We fought it from outside, using our ladder trucks to extinguish the fire.”
The blaze burned through the roof and both the first and second floors of the house, gutting the structure entirely, he said.
McCoy said the homeowner, an older male, woke up when he heard a loud bang, smelled smoke and went downstairs. There, he found more smoke and tried to put the fire out himself before abandoning the effort, going next door and calling 911. The man was the only person in the house.