Fire guts rental house near 13th and Grove

They stood on the sidewalk as the last rays of Wednesday faded from the sky, tears rolling down their cheeks.

Down the block, firefighters clambered on the roof and strode through the interior of a house that had just been gutted by flames.

“It’s been in our family for 50 years, so that’s even more …,” Tina Hendrix said, unable to finish her sentence as she watched with other family members.

The fire was reported just before 5:30 p.m. in the 1400 block of North Grove, a Sedgwick County emergency dispatch supervisor said. Flames were billowing from the front of the house when crews arrived.

It took about 20 minutes to put out the blaze. No cause or damage estimate has been released, Wichita Fire Battalion Chief Doug Winter said.

Her grandparents once lived there, Hendrix said, and she spent a lot of time there as a child. Her uncle now owns it and used it as a rental property, she said.

The house had just been rented to someone, she said, but they weren’t home at the time of the fire.

This story was originally published January 18, 2017 at 7:12 PM with the headline "Fire guts rental house near 13th and Grove."