CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — A West Side Corpus Christi fire left one home gutted Friday morning.
Corpus Christi Fire Department officials were called out to a home at about 4:30 a.m. in the 1600 block of Sycamore Place off Greenwood Ave.
CCFD Battalion Chief Jim DeVisser said when crews arrived, there was a significant amount of fire to the house.
There were reports of "a couple of residents inside even though the house was boarded up," he said, but no one was in the home when firefighters arrived.
"These kinds of fires are, especially in the early-morning hours, can be pretty dangerous fires, simply because they have so much time to build up steam before they get reported because everybody's sleeping," he said.
Firefighters were able to keep it from spreading to neighboring homes, and no injures were reported, he said.
Crews had the fire out in about 10 mins.
"Which, for the volume of the fire was pretty significant," DeVisser said.
The fire investigator assigned to the case believes the fire started outside the house and traveled inside, DeVisser said, but it remains under investigation.
DeVisser stressed the importance of smoke detectors in homes for instances such as this he said, because they are able to alert people to a fire at hours when passersby can't, and more quickly.
"Survival rates in houses that have smoke detectors is significantly higher," he said.
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