At this time Montgomery County Firefighters have responded to 5 working residential fires since midnight, with three of them occurring within 9 minutes of each other. The Fire Dispatch Center did an excellent job of coordinating these near simultaneous responses. 15 different Fire Apparatus responded to the three fire scenes, while units from The Conroe and New Waverly Fire Departments backed in and covered empty stations in the Lake Conroe and Willis areas respectively.
Our Investigators are fanning out across the County to try and determine the causes of these fires, and we will have additional information later today. In at least one of the fires ( Arrowhead Loop ), the family was saved by their smoke detectors. A fire started in the living room and when the detectors sounded smoke was rapidly filling the house. The family awoke and had to go through heavy smoke conditions to escape.
At this time there are no reported serious injuries, but again this information is preliminary and we hope to follow up with additional details later today. I am attaching our recent release on heating safety for this cold weather event. Please assist us in distributing this information. There have been two deaths already in Channelview last night, and it is our goal to keep that from happening again.
At least two of the fires, Linwood and Twin Springs, appear to have started as chimney fires.
The number one recommendation is to have working smoke detectors in your home. In at least one of these fires the detector batteries had been removed recently and not replaced because the detectors were beeping ( low battery alert ).
Here is our current list;
(Click image to enlarge)
