KAUFMAN COUNTY, Texas — A fire in Kaufman County killed 10 horses, many trained for dressage riding, after a welding accident caught a barn on fire.
“It just caught fire really rapidly,” Julissa Martinez, who owned the barn with her husband, said. “It was something they couldn’t really control.”
Martinez and her husband, Eliciel, raised and trained horses at the barn southeast of Crandall. She said her husband called her when the flames first started.
“We hadn’t even gotten there,” she said. “He said that it was over that we had lost the horses. I’m getting emotional just thinking about it.”
Kaufman County Fire Marshall Paul Ayres said the started when welding outside the building sparked highly flammable spray insulation inside.
“Most of the fires we respond to are preventable,” he said. “Lets us know what they want to do and we can walk them through some prevention steps before the fire actually occurs.”
A burn ban in effect across the area means a permit was needed for the work. Three fire departments had to help put out flames.
“The amount of fire that we had going on, very little water to be able to provide for fire suppression created a little bit of an issue,” Ayres said.
Some of the animals escaped and survived, but seven of the family’s horses and three they were keeping for friends died.
The horses were highly trained for dressage riding. They’d recently spent $80,000 on their most prized horse. Including the structure, the loss is estimated at around $1 million.
“We feel bad for the horses because they were defenseless. They couldn’t escape. We couldn’t do anything about it. It was just something that happened very quickly,” Martinez said. “They’re a part of the family you know. We saw them almost every weekend.”
Martinez said the family was in the process of getting insurance, but the losses won’t be covered.
“We’re just trying to process it right now and see what’s in the future for us,” she said. “It was something that we didn’t even think in a million years would happen to us.”