Grass fire burned a storage building and damaged a house in the Peachtree Community

What began as a grass fire on Thursday evening became a fully involved structure fire. The blaze was reported shortly before 6:00 on Highway 63 West at County Road 097, about 6 miles northwest of Jasper. The Angelina River, Beech Grove, and Jasper Fire Departments worked to not only extinguish the structure fire, which was a large storage building, but also to stop the spread of the grass fire. In fact, the grass fire came within one foot of a house, and the heat from the storage building fire melted the vinyl siding on the house. The house, storage building, and the property is the old Stanley Harris estate. He died a few years ago, and his son Damon McQueen is the caretaker.  Beech Grove Fire Chief Jamie Gunter said the cause of the blaze was unknown.