Lubbock Family Loses Vacation Home in Abilene Wildfire
By: Lisa Carr
Updated: January 26, 2009
The wildfires sweeping across parts of West Texas have been blamed for burning nearly 3,000 acres of land near Abilene, and destroying at least half a dozen homes. Tonight we hear from a Lubbock couple who lost their farmhouse in the blaze.
Mr. and Mrs. Meixner live in Lubbock, but their family has owned a vacation home down outside of Abilene for the past 70 years. On Thursday, the old home went up in flames in the Sandarosa Wildfire. Meixner says out of the six homes destroyed by the flames, his family was the luckiest. While his parents used to live in the home years ago, no one in his family has used the house as their permanent residence for years. For the past few decades, he and his brother simply used it as a family reunion spot a few weeks out of the year and they grew hay on the 110 acre property to help bring in a little extra cash.
He says the damage from the fire will probably end up costing him about $150,000, but there is a silver lining. Most of his land needed to be burned away anyway to ensure the family could grow a good crop of hay next year. He says they lost some family heirlooms in the blaze, but the house was 70 years old and they look forward to using insurance money to build a new place his family can enjoy in the future.
Now fire officials say the Sandarosa blaze has been mostly contained since Saturday, but they will continue to watch several hotspots throughout the next several days to make sure the high winds in the forecast don't spark up a strong blaze again.
