Thursday, March 28, 2024

Right place, right time

Posted

Had it not been summer, Tina Hansen and her grandson might not have survived a fire in Comanche Harbor Sunday morning.

Had it not been summer, Shawn Parsley and his friend Pete Roschmann probably wouldn’t have been out on Sea-Doos on Lake Granbury shortly after 8 a.m. that day.

Had they not been out on Sea-Doos, the friends wouldn’t have seen smoke coming from the roof of Hansen’s lake-front home on Sleepy Water Court in Comanche Harbor.

“It wasn’t a whole lot, but it looked strange,” said Parsley, a family medicine physician in Fort Worth. “We pulled in and could see flames starting to come out of the roof.”

Sheriff Roger Deeds, who is serving as Hood County’s interim fire marshal, said that the men very likely saved the lives of Hansen and her grandson, who were sleeping soundly on lower floors inside the home.

“When a fire gets that far along that it’s already vented it doesn’t take long for a fire to progress very fast,” Deeds said. “The fire was burning over their heads. They were very lucky.”

The roof did collapse within minutes after Parsley, Roschmann and another man who had been in a Bladerunner boat rousted the pair.

Parsley phoned 9-1-1 but had difficulty describing the home’s location since his vantage point had been from the water.

“The 9-1-1 operator was using the GPS on my phone to try to identify where we were,” he said.

Parsley said that Tina Hansen came to the door with the aid of a cane and told them that her grandson was somewhere inside the three-story house.

He said the men then ran through every room to retrieve the boy, who was asleep on the second floor, and to make sure that Tina’s husband Al and the couple’s daughter were not at home.

Parsley said the grandson, whom he guessed to be about 10 or so, was “rattled” and asked the men, “Have you found my mom?”

He said that a neighbor confirmed that vehicles driven by Al Hansen and the boy’s mother were not in the driveway, indicating that they were not on the property.

“Both had left for the day,” Parsley said. “The grandmother called her husband from the yard and he came back to the house. By the time he got back, it was in full flame at that point.”

Al Hansen is a bail bondsmen with Affordable Bail Bonds, according to Deeds. Efforts to reach him before press time were unsuccessful.

Parsley said that running into the home “was a spooky experience.”

He said, “We could hear the fire. We could hear the popping and crackling, and we could smell the smoke although the house was not full of smoke; it was still in the attic. But the roof collapsed in probably 10 minutes after everybody was out.”

Parsley is president of Texas Health Physicians Group, which is part of Texas Health Resources.

He said that he and his wife had a vacation home in Gran-bury for 13 years but sold it last year. After realizing that they missed being on Lake Granbury, the couple bought a new vacation home on June Rose Court near Stumpy’s a few months ago.

Parsley said that if he and his wife had not sold their former vacation home, it is unlikely that he would have been on that particular spot of the lake Sunday morning.

“Sometimes,” he said, “the Lord puts you in places where you need to be.”

kcruz@hcnews.com | 817-573-7066, ext. 258