A fire Wednesday afternoon on West Meadow Boulevard destroyed a house belonging to a local pastor and his family and damaged two neighboring residences.
Mount Vernon Fire Chief Roy Hari said no injuries were reported in the fire, which began about 3 p.m. in the garage of the house that was destroyed.
Emilio Benitez said he was at home reading when a smoke detector began beeping. His 14-year-old daughter, who was in her bedroom, came out to tell him something was wrong, he said. "The alarm went off (and) my daughter said, 'Hey, Daddy, there's smoke,'" said Benitez, a pastor at Iglesia Luterana El Camino de Emaus, the Spanish-language sister congregation of Burlington Lutheran Church. "I said to my daughter, 'Just get out right now.'"
Benitez said he went out his front door and saw flames coming from his garage.
He said he and his daughter, as well as the family dog, were uninjured. His wife was away from home when the fire started.
Two vehicles parked in Benitez' driveway were also damaged.
Firefighters from the Mount Vernon and Burlington fire departments responded to the scene and began blasting the affected homes with fire-suppressing foam. They were later assisted by the McLean Road, Clear Lake and Big Lake fire departments.
Benitez' next-door neighbor, John Moody, said he was home taking a nap when his wife woke him and alerted him to the fire. Both left their house and made it outside as the Benitez home was engulfed in a cloud of flames and smoke.