Man says dead tree caused fire that damaged two homes

two homes yesterday. you saw live coverage as the smoke filled a neighborhood near hawkins and montana. abc- seven’s complete coverage continues from the 89-hundred …block of dirk street. “natural sound” if you missed abc- seven at nine last night… you missed viewer video like this. “your-boy-mikey” shared th cell phone video with us on twitter last night. he shot this minutes after the fire started and began to grow out of control. while fire investigators remain on the case … a different neighbor says he knows exactly what happened; ” gust of wind at five o’clock, and we heard a loud kaboom, crash boom … what sid searcy tells us might make you think twice about ignoring any dead trees on your property. searcy lives in the area and says the fire started when a dead tree fell onto some powerlines… and those powerlines fell down onto the two homes: blew it over into the electric company highline and pulled all the high line wire and snapped my pole … we saw the smoke and i come running down here and called the fire department, called the electric company … if that dead tree searcy says he watched fall onto the powerlines is the cause of yesterday’s house fires… you might be alarmed to know the tree isn’t in a neighboring property. it’s in the backyard of a home right here. meaning… if it really is to blame… the powerlines were damaged by the tree… but came crashing down here… two blocks away! abc-seven’s darren hunt was within feet of the fire yesterday live on abc-seven at six. he brought us continuous updates as firefighetrs tried to save the two homes. tonight, darren has something you won’t see anywhere else. today he visited that cielo vista neighborhood and got inside one of the homes that burned. darren joins us live with a story you’ll see… … only on abc-seven … rick and maria, el paso electric officials told me the investigation is still ongoing … but initial reports did point to a dead tree a couple blocks away causing the chain reaction that burned those homes. “it’s worse than i thought, it’ pretty bad … ” rick veisel is a friend of george escamilla … who owns this home on dirk street that received 200- thousand dollars in damage. meanwhile, the house across the street looks to be a total loss. “wind blows, tree falls over an this is what happens.” “the damage inside this secon home is extensive, just look at all of this and the sad news is that all of this probably could have been prevented.” “what i am a little frustrate with, it could have been so prevented, preventive maintenance by cutting the tree down … a couple hundred dollars to cut a tree down versus $300,000 and $200,000 damaged homes and its scary, it’s really scary.” searcy, who lives nearby, said this dead tree, since cut down by el paso electric crews, blew into the electric line causing the chain reaction two blocks away. “gust of wind at five o’clock and we heard a loud kaboom, crash boom … it was a dead tree and the wind blew it over, blew it over into the electric company highline and pulled all the high line wire and snapped my pole.” moments later searcy said he spotted smoke coming from the homes on dirk street. “its sad somebody loses their home to a fire … i wish code enforcement had stricter rules, that our city council would pass stricter rules … because this tree had been dead since the freeze.” that freeze was 5 years ago. three months ago, city rep emma acosta, who represents the area where these homes burned … got an ordinance passed allowing code enforcement to cite people with dead trees in their yards. she told me today a constituent brought the tree that may have caused this fire to her office’s attention a year ago. by the way, e-p-e will trim trees close to power lines for free … simply by calling their trouble and outage line at 8-7 … 34-hundred. rick/maria.