Paris: A fire fueled by donated clothes ripped through a homeless shelter in this small Northeast Texas town, killing five residents as some tried dousing the blaze with pans of water.
Paris Fire Chief Ronnie Grooms said the cause of the fire in the converted bakery run by Seed Sowers Christians in Action remained unknown, but investigators said a roughly 25-foot-long table piled with donated clothes was a possible starting point.
"It s just really a tragedy," said Don Walker, who runs the nonprofit group but wasn t at the 42-bed shelter when the fire broke out. "It s just some homeless guys that really cared about me and I cared about them."
Grooms said an alarm sounded at about 3 am. The fire lasted for three or four hours and partially collapsed the roof.
"It went fast," said Roger Riemer, 49,who lived at the shelter since September. "There was quite a few people trying to get it out, but it didn t work. It was just getting too hot. Smoke was billowing out of there so bad. There was nothing we could do."
There were 28 men at the shelter when the fire broke out, Walker said.
Paris is about 160 kilometers northeast of Dallas.
