Man claims neighbor’s dead tree led to house fires in east El Paso

Wednesday’s strong winds are being blamed for damaged power lines that in turn are being blamed for two house fires in the Cielo Vista area.

Two homeowners now have hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage to repair.

The fire erupted in the 8900 block of Dirk Street, directly across from Cielo Vista Elementary school.

A neighbor told ABC-7 what he thinks triggered the fire. He said the root of the problem is a couple blocks away from where the homes caught fire.

Sid Searcy said he is concerned about a dead tree, located in the backyard of a home on Gallic Court, just around the corner from Dirk Street. Searcy says the tree fell into the power lines behind his home and caused a chain reaction that led to these two homes burning.

One firefighter did receive non-life threatening injuries, but no one else was hurt, although the fire department did tell ABC-7 dogs had to evacuated from one of the homes.

El Paso Electric officials told us the investigation is still ongoing, but the initial reports were that a tree blew into a nearby power line, causing them to go down. Searcy says he watched it happen from his own backyard.

“It could have been avoided,” Searcy said. “A couple hundred dollars to cut a tree down versus $300,000 and $200,000 damaged homes and its scary, it’s really scary.”

El Paso Electric spokesman George De La Torre told ABC-7: “The initial reports indicated that there was a tree or tree branches that got into our power lines that actually brought the power lines down … EPE is still investigating at this time, but we do believe that was definitely a contributing factor.”

De La Torre said EPE will come and cut down dead trees or branches that are infringing on power lines for free, simply by calling the company’s “Trouble and Outage Line” at 877-3400.

Three months ago, City Rep. Emma Acosta, who represents the area where the homes burned, got an ordinance passed allowing code enforcement to cite residents with dead trees in their yards. She told ABC-7 Thursday a constituent brought the tree that may have caused the fire to her office’s attention a year ago.