Numerous firefighters from the Houston Rural Fire Department responded late Tuesday afternoon to a barn fire on Highway Z west of Houston.
Houston Rural Chief Don Gaston said 11 firefighters and five trucks (including two pumpers, two brush trucks and a tanker) went to the property of Eryc Koch just after 4 p.m. and encountered a large pole barn full of round bales of hay, with flames burning both the structure and its contents.
“One of two things probably happened,” Gaston said. “Either the hay was too green and finally combusted, or lightning struck it. Nobody knows – he came home from work and saw smoke, and went down there and it was going.
“He lost a considerable amount of hay and it did quite a bit of damage to the barn, but we saved a big part of it.”