From volunteer to recipient after fire claims home

When the wildfires hit Bastrop in 2011, Dawn Prince was one of the first people in Wimberley ready to volunteer. She helped in the very beginning of the creation of My Neighbor’s Keeper, which raised money for those impacted by the fires. Eventually, the organization transformed into a nonprofit that donated to local victims of disaster. When someone’s house burns down in the Wimberley Valley, My Neighbor’s Keeper shows up with a check to help them get their lives started again.

This week, Prince received one of those checks herself.

“When someone puts their heart out for someone else, it is amazing,” Tom Keyser, who helped start My Neighbor’s Keeper, said. “And now she is receiving the benefits of that program that she helped start.”

Prince’s home on Timmeron Trail, off of FM 3237 on the way out of town, caught fire midday on Saturday. The home is up in the hills down small caliche roads.

“By the time we got the call, it was probably half way involved,” Wimberley Fire Chief Carroll Czichos said. “When we got there, there wasn’t anything we could do to save it.”

Prince’s home of 23 years was completely destroyed.

“Hearing my dog barking and what sounded like a huge gun, I opened my front door and then heard explosions and saw a huge black plume of smoke hundreds of feet up right behind my home,” Rebecca Farrell, Prince’s neighbor, said. “I had no idea of what was happening as I live in the middle of the hill. It was apparently an exploding fire on the ridge behind me.”

There is no telling what the explosive sounds were. Prince had a number of vehicles lost in the fire. Jack Prince is a mechanic by trade.

“It could have been old paint cans or gas containers, who knows,” Dawn Prince said.

But all of those things caused the fire to run hot.

“It was a super hot fire with all the cars and gasoline,” Czichos said. “It held a lot of heat.”

The only person injured in the fire was a firefighter with second-degree burns on his hand. He has since been released from care and allowed to go back to work. Nobody else was injured in the fire.

While lives were not lost, plenty of memories were. From photographs to yearbooks and even classic concert t-shirts, some things can’t be replaced.

“I’m still trying to wrap my brain around it and figure out what direction to go now,” Prince said.

But some things can be replaced. Without home insurance, it will be difficult, but in a community that started a nonprofit like My Neighbor’s Keeper, help is sure to come.

Prince said that she has a place to stay with her mother and her two children have already moved off to college, one of which graduated this year.

Monetary donations can be mailed to:

Dawn Prince

PO BOX 1793

Wimberley, TX 78676

Donations can also be made via GoFundMe online at https://gf.me/u/y4mkck.